Come on Up for the Rising
by BuckeyeBelle
Summary: The Autobots and NEST move on following DotM. Various pairings. Language, wartime violence.
1. Out of the Ashes

Come on Up for the Rising

By BuckeyeBelle

A.N.: Transformers belongs to Hasbro and whoever they have allowed the rights to it, which certainly doesn't include me. Likewise the West Wing characters that appear now and then belong to John Wells Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television Production Inc., and NBC TV. They don't belong to me either. No money changed hands, etc. The title is from Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising." All I own are my OCs.

If I used the same names as somebody else's OCs, it wasn't intentional, and the names should be all they have in common. Several concepts are probably fanon rather than canon. I especially have to credit the influence of Bookworm Gal's Black Crayons stories, though I tried not to copy anything directly. If you haven't already, go forth and read everything she has ever written because you've missed some great fanfic! If any other author feels that my use of any other fan-created concept or non-canon character turned out to be too close to their original idea, then they should contact me through my author profile. I will gladly edit this note ASAP to point readers their way. I have no beta. If you see anything you consider a glaring error, contact me if you'd like to beta for me.

This story is rated M for some very raw language, drinking and wartime violence. I have known a lot of real-life soldiers over the years. I love and respect them too much to sugar-coat the lives that they have lived so we don't have to. There is not a lot of really explicit sex to be found here, nothing to need an M rating on its own, but still, kiddies should hit the back button now.

*-T-F-Rising* = Scene Break

"Normal speech"

::Silent speech (Internal radio or through a bond)::

This is mostly an AU of the Bayverse which begins right after the DotM credits and spans a couple of decades, but there are ideas here going back to the first cartoons in the 80's. It will be long, and I update whenever I have a new chapter ready. If you like what you read, put the story on story alert. I picked and chose backstory from all over the place, and filed off serial numbers to try to make it all fit. Note that my version of Elita-1 is not one of the Sisters, who are Arcee, Flareup and Chromia. I hope you enjoy my first foray into Transformers fandom as much as I have enjoyed writing. Long author's notes like this will _not_ happen every chapter. /A.N.

(Chapter 1-Out of the Ashes)

Things had finally quieted down. After the battle was over, after Megatron and Sentinel were dead, after the bridge was destroyed, after Cybertron fell into the void, the wounded had been tended and the remains of the dead recovered. Even Sam's two little Cybertronian refugees, who had turned out to be as heroic as anyone else in the end, had been fished out of the Chicago River by a couple of Navy SEALS. They were soggy and miserable but still functional. Sam and Carly were comforting Bumblebee, and no wonder. Que had been gunned down right in front of him, just like Ironhide had been, and he had come within five seconds of being next.

Ratchet had got Optimus Prime to hold still long enough to make some field repairs to the stump of his arm, by threatening to get everyone to put him at the bottom of a dog pile and sit on him if he didn't cooperate. They wouldn't be able to reattach his arm in the field, but he wasn't still bleeding energon or getting Primus only knew what contaminates in it.

On the human side of things, Lennox had rounded up his surviving team as well as the retired NEST operatives who had come in with Epps and lived to tell about it, and all of them were getting something to eat from a mess tent that had been hastily raised by the support personnel who had moved in once the hostilities stopped. A green zone was set up and they were moving out from there to secure the city. The Autobots were helping with that, mixed teams of humans and Autobots were working together to clear the downtown block by block. Occasionally they found a Decepticon straggler, and when some fool decided to fight instead of surrender, absolutely nobody objected to giving him more fight than he could handle.

Prime felt some detached, distant sense of horror at himself that he was relieved most of them refused to surrender, because he hadn't yet determined what the humans were planning to do with the few prisoners they did take. But at the same time, there might be hope for those who did surrender. Charlotte Mearing had sworn to make sure it was all above board, and he believed her.

Mearing was still threatening to have Simmons arrested, but despite all her bluster and insults, nothing was coming of it, and neither of them was moving more than a few feet away from each other. Prime never claimed to understand the interactions of the human sexes, but he was certain they were either going to mate or fight—or, like Earth's cats, maybe it would be impossible for anyone not actually involved to tell the difference. In any case, it seemed to be what they needed to get through this insane day.

Urgent voices got his attention. Bumblebee was frantically stringing sound clips together. "No, she wasn't with me at all. I haven't seen her since we rolled out! I thought she was with your team!"

Prime ordered, "Report."

Sideswipe said, "No one's seen Shimmer since right before we rendezvoused with Sam and Epps' team. We all thought she was with someone else-"

Prime said, "Things like that happen in the fog of war. We'll find her." He was certain she hadn't been killed, because if she had sent out a distress call he would have heard it, and if her spark had gone out, well, he would have known that too. He had felt that sudden nothingness far too often in the last few days to mistake it for anything else. But when he ordered her to report in, there was no answer either.

Lennox said, "Got an MIA?"

"Shimmer," he confirmed. One of the Autobots who had heeded his call to rendezvous on Earth after the defeat of the Fallen, Shimmer was a small blue-gray femme who had not even specialized yet, beyond her duty as a sniper. Before the war, she would have been expected to try out several duties to find out where her preferences lay before she settled down and started advanced programming. Now, just like the rest of them, she was a warrior, and she had proven to be a good one. True, she was lightweight, but she was agile and hard to hit, and an excellent sniper.

Lennox said, "I may have a line on her. Some gang-bangers on the East Side apparently took out some Decepticon, and they report that it was already damaged from a fight with another Transformer." Lennox shot him a GPS location from his phone, which made sense with where Prime had last seen her.

Bumblebee said, "We'll go see what they have."

Prime didn't like the look of him. He wasn't short an arm but there was something about the smaller Autobot that set off all of Prime's alarm bells. "No, you stay here and keep an eye on Sam and the other humans here at the command center. I would really not be surprised if some suicidal Decepticon decided to crash the green zone and take them with him."

"Okay, Prime, but are you-?"

"I'm just going to back up Lennox' team, they need my sensors more than anything else."

Sam said, "We could all go, it might be safer than sitting in one place."

That was true on the face of it, but Lennox had picked up on the same thing that Prime had. "Sam, I'd rather have you here at the command post in case something else comes in out of left field while I'm gone. I don't trust some of those folks not to run in circles, scream and shout if something would happen. Mearing and Simmons have their hands full right now."

Sam didn't have the two commanders' experience, but he twigged fast that he really _was_ the one they expected to take care of the others with all the military personnel out of the green zone, _and_ they didn't want Bumblebee in the field right now. "OK, sure. We'll hold the fort, right, Bee? Be careful out there."

Lennox clapped him on the shoulder then he and Prime headed out, joined by the combined NEST/former NEST team.

Once they were out of Bumblebee's hearing, Lennox asked, "Anything on comms?"

"No, the connection is still there but she isn't answering. The most likely causes are either that she has been thrown into recharge mode, or her comms unit is damaged."

Lennox commandeered a huge flatbed and they all piled on. Getting the big rig to the gang's location wasn't the easiest thing, with streets blocked by debris and battle damage all over the city. Optimus Prime had never wanted to see this kind of wreckage here, the same as Cybertron had become before they had lost the war. How many thousands of innocent humans had perished today, they might never have a full accounting. Several times he had to help shift debris out of the way, and once they stopped to rescue a group of civilians trapped in the wreckage of a collapsed building.

It was fortunate that they met the civilians, because several of them had clearly seen an Autobot matching Shimmer's description fighting some unknown Decepticon, apparently one of the lesser ones that had come through the Bridge when it was open in Washington DC. They were able to point out approximately where the fighting had gone down.

They dismounted the flatbed and continued on foot.

Several young men and boys were sitting on the carcass of said Decepticon. Some of them were injured, a couple of them badly enough to need medical care which hadn't yet been forthcoming. Lennox scowled at that, because right now they were all on the same side. "How the hell did you guys take this thing down with small arms fire anyhow?"

A boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen carrying a gun as big as he was spoke up. "Bust enough caps in dey knee joints, dey go down hard, man. Then you bust some more caps in dey faces and dey don't get up no more." The skinny little smart-ass with the overdone homeboy accent made it sound easy, but Prime and Lennox looked at each other. It had been anything but easy. Their injuries, and the dead young men who had been laid out on an untouched piece of sidewalk, were mute testimony to that.

One of the men said, "Somebody already done poked its eye out. That helped. It came staggering out of there." He indicated a rubble choked alley between the burned out hulks of two three-story apartment buildings.

Lennox got on the radio with the driver, then told them where to meet the flatbed. "A medevac unit will rendezvous with you there."

The gang leader gave him a long look, and then nodded. They headed up the street carrying their wounded.

Prime said, "There's no sign this Decepticon was damaged in a fight with one of us, except possibly for the optics. Everything else seems to be attributable to concentrated small arms fire."

Epps said, "I don't know. Prime, can you take a closer look at that optic? It looks from down here like someone just jabbed it with something. Who else but Shimmer could _reach_ it to poke it in the face?"

Prime said, "It must have been this." His big hand had trouble getting hold of the small piece of metal, but once he got it out where they could see it, it wasn't rebar at all, like he had thought at first. It was the twisted remains of a metal walking cane.

Nobody knew what to make of that. But they had all seen plenty of weirdness on the battlefield. Lennox motioned to a couple scouts to take point, and the rest of them fanned out to advance.

Prime scanned the area. His sensors were just as banged up as everything else, but at short range they were good enough. "One tango range 50 meters. It's probably Shimmer but I can't be positive about that. There's no movement."

Lennox said, "Roger that."

The whole back of one of the apartment buildings was collapsed; all that was left was the front facade. Shimmer was in the rubble, curled protectively around something that turned out to be an old lady and a cat.

Shimmer was out, but quickly came around when Prime checked on her. She reported that she had been somehow almost completely paralyzed by a beam weapon from yet another Decepticon, but before the one she had been fighting could kill her, the old lady had reached out her window and jabbed her cane right in its optic.

The paralysis started to wear off as soon as Prime brought her around. Shimmer could move slowly after a couple of minutes, but still hadn't regained radio comms. The old lady's hip had been broken when she jumped with the cat to escape the building collapse, but there hadn't been anything Shimmer could do to help her other than keep her from getting hit by flying debris. Now the lady's only concern was that they didn't make her leave her cat behind.

Epps said, "Don't worry about him, ma'am. I'll keep an eye on him myself until we find out where you're going to be. Did you live in this building?"

She nodded, pale and shocky. The medic said, "We've got to get her to a hospital on the double, sir."

Lennox got on the radio.

*-T-F-Rising*

Shimmer checked on her the next day. It turned out that she was in a suburban hospital, she had no family and it would be a long time if ever before she walked again. She had no resources beyond social security.

Ratchet still wasn't sure what to make of the paralysis beam that had hit Shimmer, but she had shaken off the effects. She said, "He had me cold, Prime, there was nothing I could do and she saved my life. I can't just leave her there alone, but what can I do?"

Sam shook his head. "They're going to have to put her in a nursing home, Shimmer. She's going to need people to take care of her 24/7 for at least a while."

Prime said, "I wonder…Shimmer, scan Simmons' wheelchair and see if you can manifest one as a remote."

Some Cybertronians were capable of doing that, in fact Prime could control two such units at once and even give them a certain amount of autonomy. Shimmer scanned the chair and concentrated, then a moment later, transformed. She lost two feet in height off her normal fourteen, but manifested the chair as a remote that she could control.

"I would still need to be smaller—human size and mass, so that I can manage in one of their dwellings in order to help her. Is that even possible?"

"Yes, it's possible." Prime explained about scouts who could leave nearly all their mass behind as an inert form, leaving them with a small primary alt more suitable for some very hazardous reconnaissance missions. He located and transmitted the necessary instruction set. Shimmer took a moment to assimilate it then transformed again, producing a large metal block and a human-sized Autobot.

Prime warned, "Don't forget that you are highly vulnerable in that form, and that if anything happens to your inert form, you'll be trapped in that form permanently—or at least until something that you could use as replacement mass could be located."

"I understand." For the payment of a spark-debt, it was well worth the risk.

*-T-F-Rising*

Three weeks later, Georgianna Brown was released from the hospital. Shimmer had researched carefully for a new vehicle form, and finally had simply customized her normal sedan form to fit their requirements. The wheelchair settled into place as the driver's seat, so that it would look like there was a driver in the vehicle. If Georgie wanted to lie back, Shimmer had no trouble moving her chair to the passenger's side and putting up a hologram of a driver.

"Where are we going?"

"Epps' house in Florida to pick up your cat, then…where do you want to go? Do you want to find a place to live here in Chicago?"

"I think I've had enough of Chicago for a long time. No family here or anything and I'd rather not be reminded of the battle every time I turn around. Do you have a home somewhere?"

"Yes, in Washington DC."

"Your…are they your family? The other Autobots?"

"Yes, I think it's fair to call them that." Of course they were a family. They were all that were left of their kind, and they were so few now.

"Then you should be with them. Let's go to Washington. We can get an apartment close by, so when they need you, you won't have so far to go."

"Georgie, right now my job is taking care of you. You saved my life at the risk of your own. I owe you. We all owe you for that."

"I didn't mean to indebt you. I just couldn't let that thing—I could tell by looking at you that you were a person, just like me, and if situations had been reversed you would have done the same thing. And—you're just a kid, aren't you?"

"Not exactly. I think you would have to say that I am a young adult, approximately the equivalent of a college student or some of the young soldiers. Prime, and some of the others, have been around for many thousands of your years. They probably always will see me as a just a sparkling. Only Bumblebee is younger than I am, and not by that much."

"I wasn't about to let that thug of a tin can murder you, not if I could do anything about it. We were both lucky."

Shimmer agreed. "There…aren't many of us left now. So, yes, I would like to be near my—my family."

"Shimmer, I really don't like the idea of you tying yourself to me from now on just because I did something anyone with a lick of common decency would have done. You don't know anything about me, who I am or where I've been and what I've done."

"Do friends not care for one another in time of need? I'd like to think we could be friends. Besides, I've heard Prime say it doesn't matter so much where you've been as where you stand now."

Georgie shifted to a better position. Even with the seat reclined all the way, she still wasn't what you could call comfortable. It was going to be really fun, going on a road trip all over the eastern half of the country with a busted hip. At least she had plenty of pain pills. "I guess I can't argue with that, Shimmer, you're right on both counts. Well, first things first. Florida, here we come!"

*-T-F-Rising*

Georgie took Fleabag back from Epps and the huge cat curled up in her arms, purring. She had lost everything else, but he was thankfully in one piece and healthy as a horse. Mrs. Epps had a bag of stuff for him, food, bowls, litter box and cat litter. "Are you sure you don't want to stay the night? You've been driving a long time and we've got plenty of room."

Shimmer said, "Georgie, maybe you should listen to her."

"I'm fine, sweetie. We can make Atlanta today and get a motel there, and then we'll get to DC tomorrow. It'll be fine."

"OK."

Epps asked, "How is everyone?"

Shimmer said, "The Autobots are still working on the recovery and clean-up. We're…it's hard. We lost a lot of good bots. Not just Ironhide and the others, but since we first came here…." She shook her head. "Lennox and the NEST team are back home. I can't imagine they're in any better shape than we are. I'm not sure where Simmons is, he and Mearing disappeared a few days ago. But they'll be around, because I happen to know Mearing asked to be reassigned to NEST permanently."

"Really? I'll bet Will was overjoyed with that."

"I overheard her talking to him and Prime. She was apologizing to Prime for how badly she mishandled the situation. She feels responsible for the whole exile debacle, although I really don't think she was and there was nothing she could have done to stop it. Prime just told her that whoever was responsible, it was the only way we could have got into Chicago."

"Having the bad guys think you're dead tends to work out that way," Epps agreed. "We should have all known Optimus Prime had a backup plan. He always does."

Shimmer said, "Well, no one knew about it except the Wreckers and him. It surprised us all when they herded us into the escape pod. The _Xan_ was a piece of junk. After that last trip to the moon it wouldn't have made it out to the black again in the first place, Starscream or no Starscream. Just convincing the Decepticons that it was still spaceworthy was a miracle all on its own. For that matter, so was traveling overland from Florida to Chicago without anyone figuring it out. We used throwaway alts and kept a few cars between us, and stayed away from the energon detectors, but still."

Georgie said, "The whole thing was a long string of miracles, but it's hard to see that with so much loss."

Epps said, "We'll come back from this. Maybe even stronger than we were before. Al Qaeda couldn't stop us, these guys won't either."

"Their commanders are all gone. Megatron, Starscream and Shockwave were the worst of the lot. None of the rest of them are real leaders, and they're afraid of Optimus Prime. I don't think they'll do anything organized. But they're trapped and desperate. They'll try to hide but they will need supplies."

Epps nodded. "They'll turn raiders and pirates."

"We hope some of them may switch sides. The ones who haven't done anything really unforgivable yet. Your government will make use of them and, one would hope, prevent them causing more trouble. Undoubtedly we will still have to deal with some of them," Shimmer said.

Epps nodded. It didn't matter in the long run if you died in a glorious battle to save the universe or in some mop-up operation in the ass end of nowhere. Dead was dead. They were going to lose more good people "dealing with" those sons of bitches. The Autobots couldn't afford to lose even one more.

Georgie winced as Fleabag dug his hind foot in her leg, too close to her incision. Shimmer said, "Let's put his things in the back and I will confine him there. Feline, you had better not pee on my back seat."

Epps guffawed. Taking care of relocating the cat changed the subject, and then they got on the road north.


	2. Crossroads

(Chapter 2-Crossroads)

(disclaimer in chapter 1)

After a good night's sleep and a cat bath in the sink—Georgie wasn't allowed to get her staples wet—she felt a lot better. They went through a fast food drive through and got her some bacon and egg biscuits and, most importantly, coffee.

It was a bright sunny day and they were having a good time sailing up I-85. Shimmer was playing some rap and they were arguing about whether it was music or not. Georgie was partial to anything from Ella Fitzgerald to Smokey Robinson. Shimmer didn't even know who they were until she Googled them.

Then a song called "Tha Crossroads" by some group Georgie didn't know called Bone Thugs 'N' Harmony came on and hit Shimmer like a ton of bricks. She pulled over to the berm, but there were cars everywhere so she couldn't transform. All she could do was sit there making a low keening noise—where they were, she couldn't even cry out loud without attracting attention.

_And he shouldn't be gone, in front of his home_

_What they did to Boo was wrong_

_Oh so wrong, oh so wrong_

Shimmer cut off the music abruptly. Georgie could feel her shaking. "Talk to me, baby girl."

Shimmer sobbed, "I forgot, Skids gave me that mix. Oh, Primus, those lyrics—"

Georgie had never felt so helpless in her life. She hadn't even known the Little Twins and a lot of what she had heard hadn't been complimentary. There wasn't a lot she could do, but Shimmer was carrying enough grief to crush anybody, and she could _listen. _"Tell me about them."

"I don't know where to start. We all grew up in a town called Kaon. It was a Decepticon stronghold once upon a time, but by the time we came along it was mostly ruins—the whole damn planet was but some places were better than others. My parents' clan ran a trading post. They were neutrals. Most business owners were, no matter what their politics were. You did what you had to do to get through another day. Nobody could turn away sales because somebot's optics were the wrong color. There weren't schools anymore and my parents would have been afraid to send me if there were, so my mother taught me at home, and I helped my parents out in the shop. That's where I met the twins. They were orphans, part of a youngling gang that kept frame and spark together selling scrap from the ruins. My parents didn't want me hanging with them, so of course that's what I wanted to do.

It saved my life. Somebody told Starscream my parents were Autobot informers and he murdered them. If I hadn't snuck out that evening I'd have been there too.

I wanted to get even. What I would have got was offlined. Skids and Mudflap took me to the gang, showed me how to survive in the ruins. Then one day we tried to steal some stuff out of an Autobot camp and Ratchet caught us. We stayed.

When we got here, we figured out what Earth culture was like from the internet. What we thought it was like, anyway. The twins got into the whole hip-hop gang-banger thing because it was what they knew! The people who called them racist didn't know them at all. They had no fraggin' clue what our lives were like!"

"It sounds to me like whatever else they were, they were good friends. Good kids."

"They really were. No matter how bad things got, and the last days of the war were _bad_, they were always good to make everybot laugh. They deserved better than—getting gunned down by that fraggin' _glitch _right on our own back door!"

Georgie's tears spilled down her face. "There are no words to tell you how sorry I am. After all the trouble my kind caused yours, you put your lives on the line to protect us and too damn many of you paid the price for it. God Almighty, I never wanted kids dyin' for me!"

"I—I didn't go out there for people I don't even know. That's Prime's reason, and bless him for it, but I went for Will and Sam and all the other NEST humans, and because I might've got a shot at Starscream, and _because my clan was going_. I never knew anything but the war. It took my parents and my home. I was in it a long time before we got here. I was _always _going to see it through. I'm just sorry you got hurt because there was fighting next to your building."

"It wasn't your fault, Shimmer. There's no way any of it was your fault. It sounds like everybody whose fault it was, is dead now."

"I'm sorry I lost it like that."

"Don't be. My first husband was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, do you know who they were?"

Shimmer looked them up quickly. When Georgia told her his name, she even found his picture. He looked so young.

Georgie went on, "He got shot down over Germany. Don't ever play that Faith Hill song from Pearl Harbor unless you want to see me cry like a baby, and that's been over sixty years ago I lost him. The people we love, they never really leave us. After a while, you remember the good times, and those memories are more precious than gold. There are always going to be times, though, you get blindsided by something like a song and it hurts all over again."

Shimmer pulled herself together. "I had better get moving before the police stop to see why I'm just sitting here."

After that, they spent most of the day on the road. They stopped for a couple of hours in Virginia so Georgie could take a nap, and rolled into DC late in the evening.

NEST HQ was quiet. No one was there except for some wounded NEST soldiers who were back on light duty. Everyone else was still in Chicago.

They had talked about getting a place nearby, but wires had got crossed and there were quarters waiting for Georgie on base. After she looked her room over, she decided it was fine and she would save the rent money as long as it was all right for her to stay there.

*-T-F-Rising*

A couple of weeks later, the rest of them came home. Ratchet got his medical bay back together so he could do all the permanent repairs that had been waiting. Optimus Prime had to make sure they would be getting all the supplies they would need. Mearing was helpful with that. Lennox had to integrate a lot of new recruits into the unit, never easy when an outfit took the kind of heavy losses that they had in Chicago. Sideswipe was unusually quiet and withdrawn, often going out on the road for days at a time searching for his twin, who had been missing in action for months now. No one had the heart to say anything to him, though logically they had no idea where to start looking. Shimmer spent most of her time with Georgie, but she also did what she could to comfort little Annabelle Lennox, who was only four and too young to understand why Ironhide wasn't coming home. Sam finally got his job with NEST. Flareup was like a shadow, with her twin Arcee dead and their older sister Chromia missing they were all afraid they were going to lose her too. The only thing they could do was keep her too busy to sit around and grieve. Bumblebee had become overprotective of Sam and Carly, but everyone went along with him on that. The wreckers went ahead to Diego Garcia to get the base there in order.

Georgie spent most of her time resting. Lennox got her permission, as a two time military widow, to have physical therapy with NEST's medical staff. She worked hard to get as much mobility back as she could, unwilling to complain when she was working alongside NEST soldiers who had survived the fighting with severe injuries. For their part, she was everyone's adopted grandma.

Her place among them was assured when she caught Ratchet trying to replace the base's coffee with decaf and she threatened to "get a ladder and shove his wrench where the sun don't shine" if he didn't leave the damn coffee alone, she didn't care if he did think it was poison! She got a long, loud standing ovation from the soldiers when the grouchy old medic stomped off to his office, thwarted by ninety pounds of mean old lady. The source of the mysterious headaches and bad tempers sorted out, they moved the coffee into a humans only area after that.

One night, she was especially sore after overdoing it in PT, and got tired of waiting in her room for her pain meds to kick in. She got into a dress that she could pull over her head, and wiggled the skirt under her butt.

Georgie steered her new power chair down the common room that made up the center of the former hangar. The chair was a barely sentient workbot, dumber than Fleabag, so much so that she usually steered it herself rather than depend on its limited intellect to get her safely from point A to point B unless the space between was perfectly flat and free of obstacles. She definitely wasn't letting it pick their path through the common room. But the workbot gave her a lot more independence, and Shimmer as well because she didn't have to spend every waking minute taking care of Georgie.

Ratchet was busy with a patient but other than that the whole place was dark and quiet. Most of the bots were recharging. Only the soldiers on watch were around, except for whoever was up in Ops, not that Georgie had ever been up there.

She found Optimus outside, looking out over the Potomac. Georgie couldn't begin to read the big mech. It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that he had been around for as long as he had. Fighting this war since her kind had been living in caves. Yet someone like that still cared about mayflies like her. That gulf was there between Shimmer and her generation and the older Autobots, too. They were gods, in a way, if only by virtue of experience that had to lead to some kind of wisdom.

Right now that wisdom was battered and worn thin, leaving only questions and damn few answers. Georgie told him, "I put my father on death row."

Prime turned to look at her, incredulity clear in those blue optics. It hadn't occurred to him that her life had been anything but ordinary until she had leaned out a window and spat in the devil's eye.

She took a deep breath and huffed it out in a rough sigh. "Little boys were disappearing. I saw him with one of them, and later I heard him lie to the police about it. I told them the truth. He knocked me across the room before the cops could get the cuffs on him. They came back with a search warrant and that's all she wrote. The only other kin I had was my grandpa, and he called me a lying little bitch. I spent the next seven years in an orphanage. He was my dad, and I loved him, I swear to God I did. But I also had to stop him before anybody else got hurt." Her voice had gone gravelly and raw. She had started out telling that story to let Optimus know he wasn't alone, that other people had been forced to choose between family and honor. But by the end maybe she needed the same thing.

"Sentinel was my mentor. He taught me everything I know about being a warrior, a leader, a _mech._ Yet he gunned down my oldest friend, shot him in the back without the slightest shred of honor. He led countless thousands to their deaths, for his twisted idea of the greater good. Who am I to lead when that is the basis of what I am, when my brother started all of this in the first place? How can I be any better?"

"Because you decided to be," Georgie replied. "War breaks everybody. Look around you, there's nobody here, your kind or mine, it hasn't ground up and spit out. Then if you survive, you have to decide how you're going to put the pieces back together. Sentinel and Megatron made their choices and this is what it got all of us. But don't you ever get the idea you're like them because you're not. To you, taking a life is a last resort, not the easy way or just a means to an end. You're a ruler. Dealing out capital punishment when it's deserved is your duty. You did what you had to do, and if it damn well broke you-that's the _difference_ between you and them. Now you gotta pick up the pieces again, one more time. You need to give yourself the time to do that."

"You are a wise human, Georgianna Brown."

She snorted. "I'm an _old _human, Prime. Everyone I was ever close to is dead, and I got one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel." Her wry attitude turned what could have been a whine into a self-deprecating wisecrack.

"Yet you are still here, and I for one am glad of it."

"What's gonna happen to y'all now?"

"That is up to your government. We are a handful of exiles here, and there is nowhere else for us to go."

Georgie said, "If somebody ever needs to go to the press and commit treason by telling the truth, there isn't a whole hell of a lot they can do to shut up a ninety year old woman-except shoot me-and that would make its own kind of a publicity nightmare for them. That's something, as long as I hold on and I still got all my marbles."

"There are good people in government. That may never be necessary."

"They kicked your aft off the planet," she pointed out.

He laughed quietly at the English version of Cybertronian foul language from a little old lady. "I made little effort to avoid that. In fact, I asked President Obama not to stop it, which he would have done because this country does not bow to terrorists. It played into my plan, of course. But had we chosen to fight it, I have no doubt that thousands more innocent civilians would have paid the price. Also, now I know who to keep an optic on, and I have an idea which of them acted through cowardice, through malice, or simple pragmatism."

Georgie shook her head. "That's why you're the boss."

Ratchet stuck his head out the door. "What in the pit is going on out here? I want both of you in here on recharge _now. _Prime, you know you need to let your self-repair systems do their job if you ever want to get the full use of that servo back-and as for you, if you want me to wake up the CMO over at the NEST barracks and ask him if humans are any different, I will."

Georgie gave him a sassy salute and headed for her quarters. She had always heard that medical officers gave orders to admirals, and she supposed that was the same in any military.

The next day, Ratchet asked her, "What did you say to Prime last night?"

"Sorry, but you better ask him that." She wasn't in the habit of repeating private conversations in the first place, certainly not that one.

Ratchet apparently accepted that. "Well, whatever it was, good going. I was afraid we were going to have a problem."

Georgie figured she must have earned his respect when she stood up to him about the coffee. She said, "Give him time. That's somethin' we got now."

Ratchet said, "Yes, thank Primus, we do."

*-T-F-Rising*

Bumblebee pulled into the garage under Sam and Carly's house, when they left HQ to move back home. Once they had piled out and removed their bags, he transformed and climbed on the freight elevator with them, something he rarely did. They had chosen a place that he could fit into, but everything there was sized for humans. The broken chandelier was evidence of that.

Brains and Wheelie shot all around the place, checking it out, even though the first thing Bumblebee had done was scan for anything out of place.

Sam's parents were not there. They had for once heeded his orders to put a safe distance between them. He still saw the hurt in their eyes when he had yelled at them to get out of town. He couldn't keep himself safe if he had to worry about them running straight into the Decepticons' claws. But seeing them angry and hurt was a better memory than seeing their bloody bodies in his nightmares for the rest of his life. While Carly unpacked the few possessions they had taken with them, he got out his phone to call them.

They were in Los Angeles with his mother's brother, and they were fine. So were the dogs. They wanted him to come and visit. He told them about his new job with the government, what he could tell them over an unsecured line anyway, and promised that he would come see them when he got a chance.

His dad took the phone and apologized for hassling him about a job. "Son, I—when I realized you were going off to put your life in danger for all of us—again—I got my head out of my ass. What I should have been telling you is that it doesn't matter how you pay the bills, as long as you don't have to live in a cardboard box someplace. Your mom and I, we love you and we're so proud of you. How are Carly and BB?"

Sam grinned at their cell-phone safe nom de guerre for Bumblebee. "They're both fine. Carly's in the loft right now, BB is right here. The little guys made it through in one piece, too. We lost an awful lot of good friends, though, Dad."

Ron choked up a little and Sam knew he had to be thinking about Kuwait. "That's war, son. It's why every father prays his kids won't have to fight one. I don't think that prayer ever gets answered, though. You know they didn't lose their lives, they gave them for a damn good reason. We'll never forget that, never."

Sam's eyes filled. "Yeah, I—I know, Dad."

"So about this new job. You're not turning into the Man, are you?"

"Oh, no. Hell, no. It's kind of my job to keep the Man on a leash, if you know what I mean."

"That's my boy."

"Dad, I need to help Carly unpack, but I just wanted to let you know we're home and we're all OK."

"Your mother and I love you both."

"Love you too, Dad. Bye."

There was no more unpacking to do. Sam went down to the corner bodega to get something for them to eat. The street was full of cars and the sidewalk was crammed with people going about their business. They could do that because of what he had been a part of. In that moment, surrounded and embraced by the city's brilliant life, he didn't need for any of them to know who he was. He didn't need their thanks or their recognition. It was enough to have done what they had done.


	3. Through the Fire

(Chapter 3 - Through the Fire)

(disclaimer in chapter 1)

Most of the next week went quietly. Sam put in twelve-hour days. Will was putting him through their own private version of boot camp. He had picked up a _lot _from Epps' boys, and he had good instincts under fire. That was a good start for learning to use their weapons and equipment and tactics. Now that he had Carly to protect, he never complained about the lessons no matter how tired and sore and bruised he was at the end of a long day. He was also learning from Mearing how to make himself useful in Ops. She was also determined to teach him all the CIA tricks she could cram into his head in however much time she had before she got reassigned. She said that anyone who had managed to clue off Prime that he was compromised while under surveillance, without getting Carly killed, had the right stuff to be an agent.

Sam sat down hard as the memory of that horrible moment crashed in on him. "I thought we were both dead. I thought I was gonna have to blow my cover."

Mearing's eyes didn't soften. "That wasn't necessary because you kept your nerve. But you were ready to do that."

"It was two lives or God only knows how many! I was out of options. Carly doesn't know."

"She's a civilian. They don't want to know."

"I can't live lying to her."

Mearing nodded. "Just understand that she might not be strong enough for the truth, Sam. Sometimes love isn't enough when you can't give them normal. But I guess it's better to find that out now."

"Nothing's ever simple, is it?"

She shook her head. "Not after the shooting stops. Let's have Dutch get you up to speed on comms."

He followed her to the big board to start learning the ins and outs of the hybrid communications system they were building that would coordinate the Autobots and the NEST team under a better unified control system, more resistant to jamming and hacking. From Chicago he could see how that would make everyone exponentially safer.

Mearing nodded. "From an intel point of view, that was a clusterfuck. Nobody knew which units were in position or even who else had got inside their perimeter. If you people hadn't got that UAV going so we could get some coordination going, nobody would've made it out of there."

"_If_ a lot of things, nobody would've got out."

"I'm not generally a believer, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that we had a little help," Mearing replied.

A phone rang and Mearing picked it up. It was the mayor of New York City.

"Good afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg."

"Director Mearing, we have a situation. At least five Decepticons have occupied the St. Margaret's Square subway station. They have an as yet undetermined number of hostages. There would have been about two hundred people on that train at that time of day, as well as the people in the station waiting to board the train."

She hit an alarm. "Sir, I'll need any information that you have available about exactly which 'Cons we're dealing with, any maps of the surrounding area-and somewhere nearby that several thirty-foot-tall bots can set up a staging area."

Bloomberg introduced the city's emergency management director, who quickly transmitted all the information she had requested. He had even anticipated their need for a staging area and suggested a nearby city-owned parking lot. The NYPD's Emergency Services Unit was on site, and would be placed under NEST command when they arrived.

Nobody was left behind at NEST HQ, in case this was a diversion intended to create a chance to grab some hostages. Bee picked up Carly from their place. They met their transport at Andrews and then were in flight an hour. They landed at La Guardia, the smaller of New York's airports. The NYPD were standing by to clear the streets to give them a straight shot in to the parking lot that had been designated for the command post. The ESU command van was there already. Dutch pulled their command van up alongside it and he and a police tech quickly started rolling out cables to get their comms integrated. Sam and Carly got to work carrying things for them and generally making themselves useful.

Prime, Lennox and Mearing met with the deputy police chief in charge of ESU, Thomas O'Bannon. O'Bannon had come to ESU via the Army Rangers, so he and Lennox knew a lot of the same people.

A lot of other bots, police and NEST personnel gathered around, basically keeping their mouths shut unless they had something important to contribute. The police officers gave Georgie some strange looks. Nobody had a clue what an old lady in a wheelchair was doing there. But since she had come in with NEST, nobody said anything about it while the big brass were talking.

O'Bannon had street-level surveillance of one of the Decepticons from an ATM security camera. His alt form was a garbage truck. Prime and Lennox both remembered him from the skirmish on the Washington Mall, but neither of them knew anything about him other than that. "Apparently they've got the location of the energon detectors, because we didn't know about them until they got into the St. Margaret's square area."

Prime agreed. Stealth technology that could defeat the detectors was rare. It wasn't likely that five random survivors would have it.

O'Bannon played a brief video of the 'Cons blasting their way down the stairs into the station, gunning down a transit officer, and forcing a crowd of hostages up against a wall. Then one of them smashed the camera.

"How many hostages are there?" Mearing asked.

O'Bannon told her, "One hundred eighty-nine, in this video. There may be more hiding in the restrooms or other areas of the station."

Georgie looked at the crowd of hostages. The 'Cons were guarding them, but not paying any attention to any individual ones. They were right by the bathroom doors and the entrance to the workers-only area of the station. What Prime was always saying about destiny rarely calling at a moment of one's choosing came to mind. She poked Shimmer's leg and pointed to the picture of the crowd of hostages, and whispered, "We could blend into the crowd if we could get in there."

Shimmer said, "Maybe but getting in is the big 'if.'"

Prime asked, "Do you two have something to contribute, Shimmer?"

The femme stood up straight and said, "Yes, Prime! If we could get in there we could send back telemetry. Nobot would pay any attention to a lady in a wheelchair."

Prime said, "There's too great a risk that you'd be detected if one of them got too close, even with your suppression system."

Georgie told them, "I could do it with Simmons' chair. Shimmer, you send in a really small spy camera. Swipe the batteries out of something to power it so there won't be any energon for them to sniff out."

Mearing said, "That could _work._ All she has to do is pretend to be a random hostage. They probably didn't even bother counting the 'insects,' they won't notice one more if she doesn't do anything to attract attention. As soon as we know where everyone is in there, we can move."

Lennox told Georgie, "You know if you go in there and they get suspicious, you're not comin' out. For that matter, they could just decide to kill the hostages at any time for no reason we could make sense of."

"I understand, son."

Shimmer said, "Let me see what kind of surveillance gear we have to work with. The more Earth tech the better."

Lennox gestured to his elint tech and the former Ranger started putting equipment out on a folding table. Soon he and Shimmer had their heads together over it. Simmons parked his chair beside Georgie's and used Prime's shin plate to hold himself up while she transferred to his chair. Prime could feel him shaking with pain and effort, but Simmons kept it to himself as he told her, "My M9 is duct-taped under the seat. You wouldn't stop anything bigger than Wheelie and Brains with it, but you could blind the biggest ones. You have sixteen rounds, one in the chamber and fifteen in the magazine. Fire and _move_-they'll return fire at wherever you were."

"Does the safety on that work the same as a Beretta 92 I used to have?"

Mearing told Georgie's chair, "Get your dumb aft over there!"

It rolled over to Simmons-facing the wrong way. Prime turned it around and Simmons sat down gratefully. He reached under the seat of the other chair for the weapon. "Not exactly, they redesigned it so it's just as easy for lefties to operate. Leave it _off. _If you need it you won't have time to screw around with the safety."

She stuck the gun in her waistband, careful that a misfire wouldn't hit her and that her shirt hid it. The cold weight pressing into her skin brought home that this was serious. She looked around at them and growled, "Don't start the wake, I ain't dead yet! We still need to figure out the best way for me to get in there. Right up the subway tunnel?"

Simmons and Mearing both vetoed that. "This is New York, remember? Those tunnels have been covered with sensors since 9/11 and that mess with the Fallen. We have to assume the Decepticons can pick up the feed," Mearing said.

Simmons snapped his fingers. "Wait a minute. The tunnels that are in use today are covered. What about the old ones?"

Prime asked, "Old ones?"

O'Bannon said, "Yeah, New York is an old city as American cities go, it was first settled by the Dutch in the sixteen hundreds. Even before the subway system was established, it was full of tunnels. A lot of those aren't in use any more, or they just have pipes running through them if they are, but they're still there. Let us get with Homeland Security and see what I can find. If Lady Luck is smiling there might be another way in there besides right up the tracks, and it may not be as well secured."

Lennox told them, "Do it fast. They're not known for patience."

"We're on it, Will. See what you can come up with to give Georgie more of an edge than my M9," Simmons said.

"Christ, boys, I can't go in there looking like a video game character," she laughed. "My edge is going to be looking like a harmless little old lady."

Shimmer said, "You may be the hostages' last line of defense as well. But nothing we send in there can be detectable to them."

"Which means all Earth-tech," Prakowski, NEST's elint tech, mused. "I may have one idea." He picked up a small thin device about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

"What's that?"

"Something I've been fiddling with. Decepticons usually stop to gloat before they stomp. I figured if it ever came down to it, I'd get one shot."

"What's in it?"

"A new plastic explosive, it's a lot like C4 but it packs more punch—a lot more. The trouble is, they'll never deploy it for field use because it just degrades too fast under field conditions. Keep it sealed up and its fine, but as soon as the air hits it, it starts to deteriorate. After eight hours you've got an expensive firecracker, but it hardly ever takes us eight hours to engage the enemy. I put it on a timer. The case is an electromagnet, so with the power off, all anyone would detect is the battery. Push the button and throw it at anything metal, it sticks and ten seconds later, kaboom. You got yourself a 'Con with no leg. Or a doorway where there wasn't one before. The blast radius is about fifteen feet, so you'd have to have at least that much room between your target and any hostages."

Georgie nodded and put it in her purse, where it would be mistaken for a cell phone or the like. "I hope they haven't got any bomb sniffing dogs down there."

Shimmer said, "Most of us can scan for chemical trace, but that wasn't on my alert list until now. The compound is not a well-known explosive. If they had a specialist he would probably be able to figure out what it is, but they have no one like that."

Simmons said, "I might have something here. Right behind the station is a sub-basement of St. Margaret's Church, and on the other side of that is some kind of a tunnel that runs between these two buildings. It looks like the church and the subway station connect, or they did at one time."

Shimmer said, "We could get in there with Colonel Lennox' team-at least Bumblebee and I could. They wouldn't detect us all the way in the church basement. If something starts to go really bad with the hostages, we might be close enough to do something about it."

Bee nodded. "It could work, Prime."

The leader nodded. "Okay. The rest of us will take positions at the next stations up and down the line."

Ratchet asked, "Would they trade the hostages for energon? It would be worth it if it would save lives."

Prime shook his head. "They'd drink it as soon as they got their hands on it, and once they got overloaded the hostages wouldn't have a chance. But an empty cube, they might go for that."

Lennox said, "Even those assholes would smell a trap, Prime."

"Not if someone known to put innocent lives above everything else went rogue and tried to make his own deal with them," Prime said, dropping a big hand on Ratchet's shoulder.

Ratchet said, "I could sneak in through the subway tunnels, like I didn't know about the sensors. The worst that could happen is, it will get another one of us in position."

"The worst that could happen is, they could kill you and take the cube and then kill the hostages to spite you," Sam told him.

"They could _try," _the old medic replied, with some heat. Then he thought about it. "But if they did try, it would distract them from the hostages, especially if I act scared of them and back off up the tunnel. It all depends on good intel from Georgie about exactly where the hostages are. I need to come in from the best direction to lead the 'Cons away from them."

Georgie nodded. "So it all really depends on whether that connection between the church and the subway station is still there, or was ever really there in the first place. If not I can't sneak in."

Lennox said, "We might still be able to burn our way in with acid or thermite, then hide the hole somehow. We'll send a scout in first to make sure it's doable before we commit the whole team."

The scout team consisted of a sniper, a Californian named Jake Christianson, and his Canadian JTF2 spotter Henry McKenzie. The tunnel that Simmons had discovered ran between a warehouse and a former store which had been turned into apartments. The warehouse manager knew the old tunnel existed, but he had never been down there. He found a ring of old keys in the back of his desk drawer, grabbed a flashlight and led the way to a huge metal freight elevator.

"How much weight will this thing hold?"

"I don't know but we pack it full of stuff all the time. Why?"

"Like a car?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure, but why would you wanna—?"

"If this works out, you'll see."

The elevator let them out in a vaulted brick basement. On one wall was a wooden door about the size of a garage door. The manager found the right key and fought with the lock for a few minutes. Then he sprayed it full of WD-40 and finally got it open.

The tunnel was round and about ten feet high. There were narrow gauge railroad tracks running down the middle of it. "When everybody had coal furnaces, they used to deliver coal from here to all these buildings, but nobody's been in here in forever. I heard a brick fell outta the ceiling and busted some guy's head in."

Christianson shined his flashlight around. There were definitely fallen bricks lying around. He was thankful they had helmets. "This is as far as you go, pal."

"Fine with me. Anything else I can do, just let me know."

They followed the tunnel. Sure enough, there were several more doors into other basements, but the ones that were still marked had the names of stores that had been out of business for a century or more. They just had to keep count.

Until they came to one marked St. Margaret's church.

The door lock was on the other side, and completely rusted shut. Christianson radioed it in.

O'Bannon considered the chances the parish priest would know where that key was, if they could even break the rust loose, and the chances the whole op would get blown by people messing around making noise in the church basement. He advised, "Colonel Lennox, if your men can open it, I'd suggest they do so."

Lennox nodded and ordered, "Burn it."

The scouts used thermite strips to burn through the hinges and wrenched the door out of the frame, careful to keep the noise down. It was going to be a tight fit but it looked like Shimmer and Bumblebee would be able to get in.

Since the church had stopped using coal, there was nothing much down here. Fortunately, it was too damp to be used for storage. They made their way across to the wall shared with the subway station. There actually was a human-sized door there, with a subway schedule from 1943 tacked to it. The church basement must have been used for something during the second world war.

The door was human sized. Listening carefully, they heard nothing to indicate that there was a huge crowd of hostages directly on the other side, much less five Decepticons.

McKenzie threaded a length of fiber-optic cable under the door. There were no lights in there. With extreme caution not to make any noise, he picked the lock. They liberally oiled the hinges and eased the door open.

The room was full of boxes. As Georgie and the rest of the NEST and ESU teams joined them, they started shifting the boxes out of the way into the church basement. Another door opened into a cleaning closet, and from there into the station bathrooms.

They found a guy in a business suit in the men's room and a woman with a baby in the ladies'. The three hostages were quickly and silently whisked out of there. Bee and Shimmer stayed far back in the church basement.

Georgie put the pen with a camera and microphone that she had been given in her shirt pocket and rolled into the bathroom. There wasn't a door into the station, just the way the walls were made nobody could see in.

She wiped her sweating hands on her pants legs and edged slowly around the wall.

It was the first time she had seen 'Cons since the one in Chicago. These two looked bigger in the darkened confines of the subway station. There were two women's bodies near the dead transit officer. It looked like they might have tried to run for it. Everyone else had been made to sit on the platform. They either had the sense to play it cool or they were too scared to do anything else.

Georgie could see that a distraction was all they needed to get the hostages out through the bathrooms. But right now there were two short, hulking 'Cons _right there_ at the edge of the platform. She couldn't see what they'd done that they were walking around on the third rail with metal feet, but the lights on the train were out so they must have cut the power. Just as well, that was one thing they didn't have to worry about. She kept her head down and stayed in the shadows, but when the 'Cons weren't looking she moved around to give the camera a good shot of the whole station.

One of them was up by the stairs, some skinny beanpole with guns on both arms. He was the one who had shot down that poor transit cop. She didn't know what he could have transformed into.

The one they had tagged Garbage Truck after his alt form was giving the orders. The last one, the smallest, stuck close to him as they wandered back and forth in the tunnel.

She centered herself and waited. Her martial arts days were behind her, but the discipline that she had learned in the dojo served her well now.

Mearing and O'Bannon watch Dutch form a panorama of the whole station from the telemetry Georgie was sending them. Mearing indicated the Autobots' positions on the overlay map. "Ratchet's making his move."

O'Bannon told the commander on site to stand by. He got a click over his headset. "One of my sniper teams down in the tunnels has one of the 'Cons in his sights."

"Which one?"

"Don't know. They have orders to communicate only with clicks in case our communications have been compromised. But the Autobots will have to go right past them to get to the station, so they'll be able to coordinate."

"Do they know to target the optics?"

"Yes, ma'am, and they're using explosive rounds. Chicago PD intel made the rounds, as soon as the government saw fit to stop lying to us about a credible terrorist threat."

Mearing decided she was a lot of things but she didn't have the brass to argue that one with an NYPD deputy chief who had lived through 9/11. She just told him, "That decision was way above my pay grade at the time. And a different administration."

"Ratchet's almost there, saints preserve him."

Mearing hoped if there were saints, a few of them were looking out for him. In her time she had worked control in ops while agents did some dangerous things but walking into a hostage situation like that was about as far out on a limb as you got. Dutch added the medic's feed to the situation map.

Ratchet made his way down the tunnel. It was too low for him to walk upright. He could hear the 'Cons muttering to each other, but not a sound from the hostages. The empty energon cube he carried glowed with a pale pink light. The cubes could produce energon from sunlight, more quickly if filled with gasoline or something similar. The 'Cons would definitely find it valuable. As he got close to the station, he made a point of scanning behind him a couple of times.

"Hold it right there!"

Ratchet stopped. "Don't shoot! I want to make a deal!"

"What kind of a deal?"

"Let the hostages go, and I'll give you this energon cube—and I'll tell you how you can get out of here without tangling with Prime!" Ratchet replied.

That started an argument among the 'Cons. Beanpole was all for taking the deal, the whole thing had been about energon in the first place.

Garbage Truck said, "Don't be a glitch, he'll send us right at Prime!"

Ratchet said, "No, no, listen, they don't know I'm here! They're arguing with the Mayor's office. Those New Yorkers are so mad you wouldn't believe! You picked the wrong town to pull this slag! Prime's been trying to talk sense to them ever since we got here. All I care about are the hostages. Take the cube and get out of here. You're three blocks from the East River. Jump in, swim underwater, they won't be able to track you—get the Pit out of here while you still can. I'm telling you, it's my deal or you're gonna be decorations in front of Gracie Mansion!"

"He might be right, Boss, if we're still here when they get their slag together we can't take 'em all on."

"I'm not runnin' out of here. We got an energon cube and we got us another hostage. Turn out your hold and get up there with the rest of 'em!"

Ratchet decided that wasn't altogether a bad idea. He turned over the cube and emptied his subspace hold. All he had in there was his medical kit. Then he obediently jumped up on the platform and crouched with his servos on his head. He got right where he wanted to be, in between one of the guards and a sizable number of hostages. When the rescue started he would tackle the guard. He was pretty sure he could take that one hand to hand.

Garbage Truck was still squabbling with Beanpole, with the little mech trying to get them back on track. The guards were watching the argument instead of the hostages. Ratchet knew Ops was getting the whole thing.

Mearing said, "Now, while they're distracted and not paying attention to the sensor feed."

O'Bannon agreed. He gave his sniper team the go, and Beanpole went down, the wages of sin for a cop killer. Ratchet made his move, drawing the attention of the other guard. The rest of the Autobots came charging up the tunnel from either direction.

The second guard looked like he was about to stab Ratchet in the back while he was fighting with the first one. Lennox and a lot of NEST troops came out of the bathrooms shooting and yelling.

Georgie got the explosive that Prakowski had given her. She pushed the button and threw the explosive with all her might, then rolled back until the chair slammed into the wall. She ducked and crossed her arms over her head a second before the Decepticon's head exploded, raining fragments and energon over the screaming hostages. A few scalds and cuts and bruises sure as hell beat the alternative.

Bee knocked a hole through the wall and he and Shimmer got in the fight, helping Ratchet cover the hostages' escape. The NEST team and ESU herded them out through the church basement as fast as they could. Nobody wanted to be in the subway if any of the heavy ordnance the 'Cons were tossing around caused a collapse. The Autobots were all too aware of that danger and closed to hand to hand range as soon as they could, but the inexperienced Decepticons fought with a suicidal disregard for common sense born of sheer desperation. Their frenzy was no match for the Autobots' teamwork and savage precision in battle. By the time NEST got the last hostages out and returned, there was no fighting left to rejoin.

Shimmer caught up with Georgie. "Are you all right? You were really close to that explosion."

"My ears are ringing, but other than that I'm fine. You?"

Shimmer had a lot of dents and her left servo was flattened where she had got stepped on somehow, but there was nothing that wouldn't self repair. "Prime took the worst beating. A mech his size just isn't meant for fighting in tunnels like that, so he just soaked up whatever they could throw at him and kept coming. But he got out on his own. Are the hostages all OK?"

"By some miracle, I think they are. I heard one of our guys say they were all accounted for."

Ratchet and Georgie were the heroes of the hour. Some reporter got a picture of them that ended up on the front page of the _New York Times_. Ratchet wasn't happy that the rest of them were perfectly happy to let him get all the attention, but Georgie hissed at him, "Behave! Y'all need all the good publicity you can get!" Then she smiled sweetly for the camera.

They were all relieved when the hoopla finally died down and they could go back to base.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Through the Fire by Larry Greene, from the Top Gun soundtrack. /A.N._


	4. Iridescent

(Chapter 4—Iridescent)

(disclaimer in chapter 1)

That night Sam couldn't sleep, but Carly was out like a light. He took the stairs down to the garage, where he found Bee standing at the back window just looking out over the empty gravel lot that served as a back yard.

"Something out there?"

"Stray…dog."

"Hmm." Sam sat on the window sill. "What's the matter, I thought you were going to recharge."

"Can't. Same fraggin'…dream."

"For what it's worth I've had that one myself more than once." If both their voices still shook with terror, they just kind of had a silent agreement not to notice. Their shared nightmare was a real simple one-Wheelie and Brains were a few seconds late dropping the 'Con protoforms out of the carrier and Soundwave had blown Bee's head off.

"Had close calls before. Fraggin'…Sentinel…rust gun. Stupid...act this way."

"You had a fighting chance then. At least to get the hell away if nothing else. But that fuckin' execution…there wasn't a damn thing either of us could do."

"Couldn't…save…Que. Couldn't warn Ironhide. Useless. Don't even want me around Ops anymore."

"No, Bee, you got that all wrong. If you were in there when something went down, you'd feel like you HAD to roll out with everyone else just like when those 'Cons took hostages in the subway. If something else would happen to make things worse for you they'd feel responsible. If somebody got busted up too bad to fight, you wouldn't think anything of it if Ratchet kept them out of Ops while they got fixed up. This is the same thing. You need time to work your way through this and they're giving you time. We've _got _time. The war's over and we won."

"Sam…so fraggin' scared!"

"Me too. I was sure I knew what was gonna happen, after that motherfucker got finished with you he was gonna find me and Carly and there wasn't going to be anything I could do for you or her either one. I felt like I fucked up everything and…_God,_ there was just no way out!"

Both of them started crying, clinging to each other like two terrorized kids who had seen the inside of hell, and that was exactly what they were.

Carly had awakened when she heard them talking. She came running down the stairs in her nightgown and threw one arm around Sam, the other as far as she could reach around Bee, crying with them and telling them over and over again that everything was going to be OK. Wheelie and Brains came over hesitantly, and Wheelie admitted to similar nightmares about being trapped in the wreck of the Decepticon carrier at the bottom of the Chicago river, till Brains had found a hole they could get out of. The SEALS who found them had seen his red optics and almost shot them. Only some fast talking and the Wreckers' timely arrival had saved them. Carly told them how she had known they would come for her and how afraid she had been that everyone she cared about would die trying to rescue her.

Sharing the fear out loud reduced its hold over them. As the first light of dawn filtered through the dusty windows of the garage, they all started to believe that somewhere past all the loss and horror and sadness, everything really could be OK again.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Iridescent by Linkin Park, from Transformers: Dark of the Moon. /A.N._


	5. Diego Garcia

(Chapter Five—Diego Garcia)

(disclaimers in chapter 1)

Georgie had never in her life expected to see a place like Diego Garcia. An island in the Indian Ocean, it was an important military base and the harbor was full of Navy ships. She had Fleabag on a leash and didn't intend to let him go anywhere without it. She had found out all the stray cats and dogs on the island had been shot, and she wasn't taking any chances with him.

Shimmer stopped to attach a lead from her wrist to a port in Scramble's headrest. Georgie felt a hum run through him, and he transformed his tires to sand-friendly balloon versions. Georgie had never had the heart to tell the lummox that he'd got his name because everyone thought his processor was scrambled. He reminded her of a Great Dane her second husband had once owned, dumb as a box of hammers but brave and loyal.

Shimmer warned, "Watch out for the crabs. There are coconut crabs here that are more than a foot across, not counting the legs, and they're a protected species so you can't just step on them. The young ones will try to pinch small sections of plating from our joint coverings to use for shells, just like those little hermit crabs that you can get in the pet store. There are also warrior crabs, but they aren't as big and no one cares how many of those you step on. I've heard the men telling new recruits not to pass out drunk in the jungle, whatever they do. I don't know how serious they are, but I have seen those little horrors kill and eat rodents."

"Shit! Protected or not, if one of them things tries to bite me, I'm killing it," Georgie said.

"Just don't get caught," was Shimmer's opinion. The idea of getting disabled in the jungle and dismantled by some kind of organic vermin creeped her out worse than just about anything else she could think of.

"Can they get in our quarters?"

Shimmer said, "They have, but I think they had help. The NEST guys, and the Little Twins-" She stopped abruptly. Reminders of their grief were everywhere.

Georgie said, "I think they'd want you to remember the pranks they pulled."

Shimmer nodded. "I know they would." She subspaced Georgie's bags and they followed the crowd up the street from the airfield to NEST HQ.

There was an admin building, and next door a huge living quarters for humans and bots alike. One side was the barracks, two stories of rooms for one or two people, a kitchen, showers, laundry and all of that. Most of the NEST soldiers lived there, only those whose families accompanied them lived in the nearby base housing. Ratchet's medbay was next to the humans' medical facilities. Each of the bots had private quarters on the other side. There was a common area down the center, a lot like the one in the DC base only bigger.

Georgie was familiar with living on base, as she had before when she had been married. She actually ended up helping some of the civilians sort out things like PX cards and explaining base regs.

Georgie asked for downstairs quarters to make it simpler for Shimmer. There was an elevator, but she didn't like the idea of her friend having to be that far away from her inert form if there was some kind of a situation while she was in her mini form. She ended up between Simmons on one side and Sam and Carly on the other, they put her and Simmons right next to medbay. Mearing had quarters on the other side of Sam and Carly, though she was still in DC for now, and Dutch was next down from her.

After she got unpacked, Georgie decided to get something to eat and then explore around the base and get her bearings. Fleabag poked around their room and made himself at home on the window sill.

She heard someone crying and investigated. It was Flareup. The room she had shared with her twin still had a bunch of Arcee's stuff in it. Georgie was going to see if she could help, but Sideswipe was already with her. If anybody understood, he would. She went on ahead to the kitchen.

After she finished eating, one of the soldiers took her tray back. She went outside. A wide road led to Admin. It was probably the only office building anywhere with a thirty foot tall front door. There were soldiers on guard everywhere and she had to show her ID several times.

She continued past Admin to the beach, and found that there was a shorter way down there from the other side of the residence building.

Once she got down to the beach, she realized why Shimmer had given Scramble the balloon tires. Except for the rough road, it was a natural beach and the only packed sand was below the high tide line. Above there, it was either loose dry sand or rocks. She saw her first coconut crab and understood _exactly_ why new recruits were warned not to pass out drunk in the jungle. Those pincers looked wicked, and she did not like the way it was looking at her. When it started poking around Scramble, he screeched at it. Georgie encouraged it to go somewhere else by lobbing a big shell at it. She wouldn't have been shy about giving it a swift kick with her good leg, but she remembered Shimmer's warning about getting caught.

Sam and Carly were already on the beach. Sara Lennox had brought her little girl down there, too. Georgie had known a lot of soldiers, as well as a lot of highly trained martial artists, and as she watched Sara move she realized she was looking at both. Sara might have officially ended her military career to be a stay-at-home mom, but that didn't mean anything. And she was aware of every single movement around her.

Georgie hoped how soon she would be allowed to swim. The clear blue water really looked inviting, and she longed for its freedom. There had been a time she had moved with that same deadly grace as Sara Lennox. Now it would be a miracle if she ever hobbled along with a walker. She hated it.

Shimmer joined her. She said, "We can use the beach all the way out to the point. The other side of the island is a nature preserve. You can go there if you want to, but it's infested with those damn crabs."

"Yeah, one of them scared Scramble a little bit ago. I had to bounce a seashell off of it to chase it away. What's down the other way?"

"Base housing down to the harbor. There are officer's and enlisted clubs and a few human recreational things like a little bowling alley. All I ever did was drive by them. Oh, and there's a big screen where they show movies a couple nights a week. When that's on, the soldiers usually have a cookout on the beach. Everybody on the whole island usually comes down for that."

"Let's go that way. Is there much of a base town here?"

"Not really, we're the only ones who really live permanently here now. There are a lots of sailors and Marines, but they live on their ships. They're not usually here long, then they're on their way to the Gulf. It's the support people who are actually stationed here and there aren't as many as you'd think. There're no civilians living here besides ours, they were all kicked off the island. _We _didn't do it, this was before we got here. But anyway, with no civilians there are no civilian owned businesses or anything like that."

They wandered around for most of the evening. Shimmer stayed in her bipedal form until they got nearly to the port. Then she drove around the base, showing Georgie where the PX, the base hospital, the laundromat and the post office were. By the time they got back, Georgie was tired and quite ready to get some sleep. She opened the window to enjoy the sea breeze. There were definitely a lot worse places you could get stationed than a tropical island.


	6. Can't Cry Hard Enough

(Chapter Six—Can't Cry Hard Enough)

(disclaimers in chapter 1)

By the time a few more weeks had passed, everyone was getting settled back into Diego Garcia. Optimus Prime rolled into Admin a few minutes before his watch was due to start and transformed to walk into Ops. Lennox was there already, up on the catwalk going over his plans for the day's training exercises with Dutch and Sam. Lennox was pleased with the way his new recruits were coming together, but he was still working them hard. He greeted Optimus on his way out to meet up with his soldiers.

Optimus checked with Shimmer, who had taken the night watch. She stood as he approached. "Good joor, Prime."

"And to you, Shimmer. Quiet night?"

"Yes, Prime, mostly. One of the port's patrol boats thought they picked up some weird ghost on radar out by the point. Sideswipe and Flareup went up there and checked it out but they didn't see anything. NEST is going to be training in that area, Will said they'd keep their eyes open but it probably was a false alarm."

"Where are Sides and Flare?"

"Playing 'Cons, setting up an ambush up there for NEST to walk into."

Prime thought that should be interesting to watch later. He called up the sensor reports from the alert, and quickly agreed it probably was nothing. Shimmer signed out and left to help Georgie get ready for her day.

A few minutes later, Mearing called from DC. "I have some good news for you for once, Prime. Chromia turned up a couple of hours ago. I'd have called sooner, but I had my hands full with her and I just now put her on a plane.

She woke up in an abandoned warehouse, really confused and out of it, and followed your beacon here. I just found her outside the fence when I came by the office to check on things—I've been on Capital Hill all day. We think the Decepticons must have been keeping her shut down for some reason, she has a gap in her memory from the time she disappeared last year until she reactivated this morning. She already knew about Ironhide somehow and she's taking it real hard. I think she wanted to go out there where he died and shoot herself. I talked her into joining the rest of you on Diego Garcia before she does anything stupid, but I thought I had better give you a heads up."

Prime's optics unfocused for a moment as he tried to touch on their clan bond, but she was still too far away and too weak. He turned back to Mearing. "I appreciate that you did. Chromia and Ironhide were already sparkmates when I met them as a sparkling. She would have known on some level the moment he passed, no matter how deep in stasis lock she was. We don't usually survive that, but Chromia is one of the strongest femmes I know." He would also have to tell her about Wheeljack, the twins, Mirage...and her sister Arcee.

Mearing went on to report, "Chromia woke up in a warehouse outside Atlanta. She didn't see any sign of Sunstreaker or First Aid. I didn't question her beyond that. I have a team en route there now. I'll keep you apprised if they find anything. Let me know if I can do anything more." There was an unaccustomed kindness in her gruff voice, as well as the helplessness that comes of knowing that the offer, though honestly made, was likely hollow.

He thanked her and hung up, then went to tell everyone the news.

Lennox excused Flareup from the training exercise. As distracted as she was, it was too dangerous for everyone concerned. Sides decided to go ahead with it. Her plane wouldn't get in for several hours yet, and it would likely be a while before the team that Mearing had sent to Atlanta reported back. If there even was any news about his brother, it would probably be tomorrow before he heard anything.

*-T-F-Rising*

Chromia rolled off a transport in motorcycle form and transformed as soon as she was clear of the ground crew. The first thing Prime thought was, it was the first time he had ever seen her show her years. Whatever the Decepticons had put her through was nothing compared to losing her sparkmate. Flareup raced up and hugged her sister, then Prime held her. She was the closest thing he had ever had to a mother. Seeing her so hurt tore the spark out of him.

"Where's Arcee?" She had a sibling bond with her sisters, but they hadn't been twin sparks, thank Primus. He didn't think even Chromia could have survived two such losses.

Flareup's optics dimmed.

"Aw, frag, no..." Once again, the sisters held each other. Before anyone could say a word, the femme scanned the familiar bots waiting on the runway, figuring out who was absent. "Oh, _Primus_. Are we really all that's left?"

Optimus Prime said, "Yes, except for Sunstreaker and First Aid. NEST is going through that warehouse where you were. I hope there will be something there to point us in the right direction."

She nodded and just let Ratchet gently lead her to the medbay for an exam. All she wanted was to rejoin her sparkmate, but the woman Mearing had been right that her friends so clearly needed her—Flareup needed her. She would wait at least a while.

*-T-F-Rising*

Chromia stood by the small metal casket containing Ironhide's remains. She had known what to expect, she had seen plenty of times what was left after someone got hit with a rust gun. But standing there knowing there was nothing left but a few ceramic components and the scarred, pitted vessel that had once been his spark chamber was more than she could bear. The loss became all too real and it broke her. But there were things to be done, duties that fell to her as his closest companion. She laid her servos gently over the Autobot symbol on the casket lid and began the ancient prayers in the Cybertronian language of her youth. Those carefree days called to her now, when she and Ironhide had first met. In that moment she felt sure if she opened her chest plates she would find nothing where her spark chamber should be but a raw, empty hole. When her lover, her mate, her best friend had gone into the void, he had taken everything worthwhile about her with him.

She finished the prayers. What did it mean now to consign a loved one's spark to Primus? The All-Spark was gone. Not just lost in the vastness of space but destroyed, gone forever, and with it any hope of their loved ones coming back to them as new sparklings. Now their ultimate fate was just as mysterious as the destination of the humans' invisible souls. Faith had never been part of the Cybertronian experience. They knew what was. It had been simple fact. New mechs and femmes came online, and one of the rites of passage of a young bot was the quest to learn of past lives and reunite with the sparks dearest to them. Sparkmates knew they would be reunited, sometimes again as mates, sometimes as twins the next time around. But now there was no certainty, and she had no idea where to begin looking for faith. She didn't think the human religions would know what to make of her, and even in her sorrow she had to laugh at the idea of Hide in a white nightgown, sitting on a cloud playing a harp.

Even revenge was denied her. She knew a moment of irrational, absolute hatred for Optimus Prime. Sentinel should have been HERS. She should have ripped him to tiny pieces, component by component and ground every one of them to dust in her servos. She should have been the one to hear him bleat for undeserved mercy. She should have been the one to send him screaming into the void to face the wrath of his victims.

She couldn't take down a Prime. The best she could have done was to die uselessly on Ironhide's pyre, and Optimus would have been left to avenge yet another senseless loss. If she couldn't have her revenge then there were only two other people who had the right, Optimus and Will.

"What am I supposed to do now, Hide? What in the fraggin' _Pit _am I supposed to do now?" She fell across his coffin, shuddering with an agony that had no other expression. It hurt too much to scream. If it weren't for wrecking other people's lives, she would have eaten her own gun right then, the pain was that great. Somehow she was going to have to learn to carry on without hope or light. Cold duty was going to have to fill the big Topkick-shaped hole in her life.

Then somehow she felt a flicker of warmth across the broken sparkmate link. At first she thought it was just her imagination but then she felt the pulsing of her spark settling into a shared rhythm, unmistakable and _right._

Chromia staggered out of the tomb with a wild look in her optics. "Optimus. Scan me and tell me what you see. I need to know if I'm completely glitched."

"What?"

"Seeing things that aren't there!" She snapped at him like he was a new sparkling, something she had rarely done even when he had been a new sparkling. Prime quickly scanned her, saw nothing out of the ordinary at first, then gave a second look.

"Primus! This isn't possible!" He exclaimed.

"You see it too? You're certain?"

"If by that you mean an echo of Ironhide's spark beside yours, then yes, I see it too. Or we're both glitched," Optimus told her plainly. Whatever she had experienced, it was not her imagination, and he prayed that she could take strength and hope from it.

Ratchet took a half step forward. "That...isn't..."

"See for yourself!" Optimus told him.

The medic did, then abruptly pulled Chromia close in a rough embrace. "Some things are beyond what we know of medicine, but we should have known Hide would _never_ leave you."

Chromia sagged in his arms, at last able to give way to her grief and begin to heal. The two mechs stayed by her side and held her until the storm passed, then together the three left the cold concrete of the mausoleum.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Can't Cry Hard Enough by Judy Collins. /A.N._


	7. Hope Floats

(Chapter Seven—Hope Floats)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

Ratchet ran tests on the other coffins. Jazz was gone-that made sense, because he had been killed while the All-Spark still existed. But each of the other coffins had an energy field that he couldn't explain.

Flareup asked plaintively, "Why do you think Arcee didn't come to me?"

Chromia said, "Maybe it only works with sparkmates. Ironhide and I've been together for so long, that it only makes sense I have an imprint of his spark pattern. Arcee was your twin but it isn't exactly the same kind of bond. Or maybe she's in a better place. Primus knows she's earned her rest. Are ghosts really all here in this world, or is most of them really in the Well of Sparks?"

Flareup nodded. "It's just…I miss her so much," she cried.

Chromia held her. "I know you do, sparkling, I know you do. So do I."

Sideswipe said with a very uncharacteristic hesitation, "This may be a horrible idea, or just plain impossible, but-if their sparks are still here at all, and everybody has memory backups, why can't we make them new frames?"

Ratchet said, "If we had protoforms that had never been activated, and I downloaded their backups into them-in theory, their sparks should be drawn to the new bodies. But where would we get protoforms on this planet?"

"What would we need to build them that we don't have?" Prime asked.

Ratchet thought about it. "Specialized equipment, and I'll have to build tools to make the tools. But I can do that. It will just take time. We can donate and culture protoform liquimetal. Again, that will take time. The thing that makes each of us unique from a base protoform is our own set of nanobots. They start to differentiate from the base form as soon as we come online. The major differences occur with our first transformation. Even if we return to protoforms later, we still carry a memory in our nanobots that carries over when we scan a new form. I should be able to recover them from Wheeljack, Arcee and Mirage. Chromia, you and Ironhide almost certainly carried a few of each other's nanobots. The more of his that I can extract from you, the better the match his new frame will be to the old one. But the twins...there's no way to recover any of their nanobots."

Because she knew nobot else would dare to be the first one to suggest it in front of her, Chromia said, "I think we should bring back Wheeljack first. He was always the one who did this kind of theoretical work. If anyone can figure out something for the Little Twins, Que would be the one."

For the first time, Lennox spoke up. "This can't leave this room. You tell everyone that they're brand new Autobots named after the ones who died. Maybe even admit to downloading their memories. But if anyone out there ever finds out you can bring back the dead, it will be chaos. People will be wanting their loved ones back, and it'll mean fuck-all to them that it works different for humans. _Nobody_ can ever know."

Prime nodded slowly. People made desperate by the loss of their loved ones might be capable of anything. "This is basically the same process that would have been used to create protoforms for sparklings in the early days, except that they would have been blank slates. Then they would have been taken to the All-Spark to be granted a new spark. There are old traditions that we can put to good use."

Bumblebee carefully strung together clips of words to create a more complicated sentence than his usual. "If this is forbidden knowledge, forgive me for asking. But if the original Primes created the Allspark, where did their sparks come from in the first place?"

Optimus said, "There's no good reason for it to be forbidden knowledge anymore. You are all that remains of the Autobots, so you need to know these things. Now that Sentinel and Megatron are dead, I am the last of the Primes, so what information I don't pass on to you will die with me. The original Seven didn't create the Allspark. It was the other way around. The Allspark was created by Primus, at least if we can put any credibility in anything Sentinel ever told me."

Chromia said, "I don't think that pit-spawned glitch would have lied about anything that you could have discussed with another Prime. He couldn't afford to get caught in a lie and lose your trust."

Optimus had to agree that was logical. In his youth he had spent time with Ultra Magnus and the others as well as Sentinel, and it would not have been out of the ordinary for him to have asked them to clarify something he didn't understand. "The Allspark was discovered by the Quintessons and used to create their slave race—our ancestors—but it had its own intelligence and hated to be used for that. Unknown to them, it sparked the original Primes so that they could lead the rebellion."

Ratchet said, "We could pretend to use something like some ancient progenitive ritual to explain to the outside humans where all the new bots came from. They wouldn't know the difference." The way he said "outside" made it clear to Sam, Carly, Georgie and Will that they were part of the family, whatever bodies they wore. "The Matrix of Leadership absorbed the energy of the Allspark from Sam here. It's basic that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so its ability to generate life should, in theory, still exist. We just don't know how to do that yet."

That started several months of intensive work, all on nothing more than hope and faith. Ratchet worked obsessively, but eventually had to admit he needed help, and there was only one person he trusted.

Mikaela Banes had been his apprentice before she and Sam had broken up and she had left town. They had stayed in touch, though. When he called her one afternoon and told her he needed her, she hadn't hesitated or even asked what he needed her for. "As soon as Prime can push my travel clearances through, I'll be on a plane."

That took a few days. She left Baltimore in a snow storm an hour before the airport closed, and walked down the ramp on Christmas Eve in a torrential rain.

Ratchet was waiting in alt form, he opened his door for her and she dived in. "It's raining cats and dogs out there!"

"How was your flight?"

"Long! I spent half the flight sleeping on a pile of crates. Ratchet, you should have called me sooner! Damn it, I'd have been there in Chicago!"

"I know you would've. There wasn't a chance."

"Well, better late than never. What can I do?"

She listened, wide-eyed, as he told her.

It felt weird when they got into the commons and Sam and Carly were there. They shook hands awkwardly like old acquaintances, who had shot up a town together and lost their virginity to each other what felt like forever ago.

Wheelie was less restrained. "WARRIOR GODDESS!" He leapt up to her arms and she hugged him. "You came home!"

"I guess I did. I left you with Sam because I thought you guys would be _safer_ there than running all over creation with me, now what's this I hear about you crashing a 'Con carrier in the fraggin' Chicago River?"

"They put us out on the balcony in a box with the dog!" Wheelie adroitly shifted the in-trouble spotlight Sam's way.

"Fuckin' hell!" She shouted. "Sam Witwicki, you son of a bitch!"

Sam grabbed Carly and dived behind Bumblebee, figuring at least Kaela still liked him. She had cried when she said goodbye to him!

Ratchet threw her duffel bag to Sam, none too gently. "Find her an empty berth. Come on, Kaela, I'll show you where you'll be working."

Wheelie and Brains went with Kaela. Ratchet pushed through a large doorway curtained off with strips of plastic sheeting. Five half-finished protoforms lay on high tables. She shuddered as it reminded her of bodies laid out on morgue slabs. "Ratchet, I'll do whatever you need, but I don't know what that is."

"Back home, protoforms were built by healers who specialized in that, and they had a lot of mods that really weren't used for anything else. A lot of it is exceptionally delicate work up inside their frames. I'd have to do it remotely. You've always had a talent for that kind of work. I'll show you what I mean."

She dropped her carry on under the tool bench and got to work. Before they knew it, six hours had passed and it was 0100 on Christmas morning. Ratchet gave her a lift down from the table.

Wheelie told her, "You'll have to go up to Ops and sign in to get your key-card."

Ratchet checked on a couple of things. "I'll walk up there with you."

"Why?"

The old medic vented a huff of hot air. "Sam's Ops team now. You're on my team. If I have to make that clear I'd rather do it now and get it over with."

"I can handle Sam."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"I won't kill him. Much."

Ratchet snorted. "Let's just get you in your quarters sometime before daylight. You need something to eat, too, your blood sugar is low."

"I wish you wouldn't do that. It wasn't like they served meals on the transport."

The rain had slacked off enough that Ratchet was able to shelter her and the minibots under an outstretched servo. They went on in to Ops and she asked Sides about the key-card.

Mearing walked over. "What's this about a fight in the commons between you and Sam?"

"What fight was that?"

"Don't get smart with me."

Kaela's eyes narrowed as she stood toe to toe with the older woman. "Don't get holier than thou with me. I asked you what fight was that because there was no _fight_. There were some sharp words because I didn't like the way he treated some friends of mine, then he took his little girlfriend and hid behind Bee. You got a problem with me, say so. Sam's got a problem with me, tell _him_ to say so, or better yet tell him to stick it up his ass, do his job and let me do mine. I am not Ops team. I am Med team. Unless he's bleeding, I don't need to have anything to do with him. Now unless you _do_ have some kind of a problem, give me my fraggin' key-card so I can get some shuteye before I go back to work in the morning."

Mearing handed it to her. "You're right next to the second-story entrance to the medbay."

"Thank you." She turned on her heel and went back to Ratchet.

Mearing glared at the minibots. "What are you two looking at?"

Brains clapped his servo over Wheelie's mouth before he could tell her, and dragged him off after Kaela. They went back to the commons.

Kaela said good night to Ratchet, then raided the kitchen. She found a large crock pot of bean soup and some cornbread, and finally located a bowl. After she cleared away her mess, she went upstairs and found her quarters. This had every indication of being fun, fun, fun for a while.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Hope Floats by Heather Mac Rae. /A.N._


	8. Meet Me at Mary's Place

(Chapter Eight—Meet Me at Mary's Place)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

Christmas Day dawned even wetter than the day before. The wind was whipping palm trees around like they were twigs, and when Kaela looked outside it was raining sideways. Every time someone went outside half an inch of water blew in. Somehow no one seemed to be letting it dampen the Christmas spirit. Kaela got coffee and a cinnamon roll, watched some kids open presents, then went on in the medbay.

Jolt staggered in twenty minutes later. He was gripping his right arm, digging his fingertips in behind an armor plate. Energon was leaking pretty badly. She yanked on rubber gloves and a face shield to keep from getting scalded if it sprayed and climbed up to the injury, calling to Ratchet. "What happened?"

"The wind blew a stop sign and it hit edge-on right between my armor plates. I think it got a main line."

"OK, keep the pressure on it till I can clamp it off…got it."

Ratchet came in. "How bad is it cut?"

"There's a slash about twenty centimeters long."

Ratchet detoured to grab a spool of energon line. There was no way a repair like that would hold under pressure. "Jolt, she's going to have to remove the anterior plate to replace that line. Do you want me to shut down your sensors?"

"Pit, no, the last time you did that the numbness didn't wear off for a joor." He detached the plate himself, only wincing a little. "Just replacing a line isn't that bad. I've got most of the sensors turned down anyhow."

Mikaela quickly replaced the line, getting fuel back to his servo motor as soon as possible. Ratchet had him hold his arm over the huge sink along one wall and sprayed off the energon so he could make sure there were no other injuries. Meanwhile, Mikaela checked to be sure the armor plate's attachment points hadn't been damaged.

Ratchet informed Prime about the accident. He ordered everyone to get to shelter if they weren't already, and stay put until the wind subsided.

A couple of soldiers were the next emergency cases, they had got caught out in it and one of the guys fell and broke his arm. Kaela splinted it while Ratchet consulted with the NEST CMO. She asked him to transmit scans, then ordered pain meds and told them to wait until it was safer to transport him to the base hospital to get it set.

The pain meds soon made the injured man sleepy. His buddy stayed with him.

Kaela got him a towel. "You must be new," she said, then thought how lame that was.

"Russ Michaels. You're Kaela, right? I heard you were Ratchet's apprentice."

She nodded. "Mikaela Banes, yeah. Where are you from? You sound a little bit Southern."

"Boone, North Carolina. It's a college town, there are people there from all over so the accent isn't as pronounced as it is some places. I can't quite place your accent."

"All over. My old man was a tumbleweed. I was born in Denver, lived in LA and San Fran for a while, foster home in Fresno, several places after that but not long enough to pick up the accent, DC for two years, then Baltimore, now here."

"That's almost as bad as an army brat."

"Nah, army brats get to live in interesting places like Germany or Japan," she laughed. "We just moved around a lot." One step ahead of the law, mostly, but she wouldn't get into her family history just yet.

"What time is your shift over?"

"Haven't talked about it, I'm not much of a clock puncher. Whenever Ratchet gets tired of looking at me and kicks me out, I guess," she grinned.

"There's going to be a Christmas party tonight in the commons. You should go."

"Nah, I had a run-in with Mearing last night. I'd better stay out of her way till it blows over."

"Bullshit. You can hang with me. You can't miss one of the best parties of the year because you're scared of Mearing."

"Hey, I didn't say I was _scared_ of her, I just don't want any trouble with the bosses before I can even get my feet on the ground around here."

Ratchet said, "Michaels is right, you should go. Mearing isn't big on parties, and if she does show up, so what? You have as much right to be in the common room as anyone else does. Just stay away from Sam."

Russ realized there was more to it than he knew.

Mikaela said, "Oh, for God's sake. It'll all be on the grapevine anyway. Sam and I were together from Mission City till just after Egypt. We had a noisy breakup. No matter what you hear it was nobody's fault. We just grew up and grew apart, that's all. That's why I finished school in Baltimore. When I got in yesterday, it was kinda weird. We sorta got into it in the commons last night. It was really nothing but I guess it got stretched before Mearing heard it, and when I went up to get my key-card she gave me some flack about it."

Ratchet laughed. "I went with her because I thought I might have to run interference for her, but our Kaela can take care of herself."

"Mearing's an odd duck. She came up through the CIA. She and Simmons apparently go way back. Don't get me wrong, when you're out in the field there's nobody you'd rather have in Ops. She's just never gonna win Miss Congeniality."

Mikaela said, "I got nothing against her. I respect her for watching out for her team. But I'm not having her up in my face for something I didn't do either."

"Never been on a military base yet where the gossip ain't worse than a bunch of junior high school girls. There isn't a whole hell of a lot else to do sometimes. If you told her your side of it, that's probably all there is to it."

"OK, I'll go," Kaela smiled.

She ended up staying with Russ and his buddies, danced half the night while it continued to pour the rain outside, and had a couple too many cups of eggnog. She saw Sam just long enough to say a civil hello to him and Carly, but then she got distracted meeting Dr. Parker and the rest of the NEST medical staff, and their paths didn't cross the rest of the evening.

*-T-F-Rising*

The party was pretty subdued from Shimmer's point of view. Though they had good reason to hope their missing loved ones weren't gone forever, there was no avoiding the empty places. Everyone was making too much of an effort. The NEST kids were everyone's saving grace. It was impossible to be too down on Christmas around a bunch of kids, no matter if the holiday itself didn't really mean anything to the bots.

Georgie asked about their customs and Shimmer told her the big holiday on Cybertron had been Liberation Day, when the First Primes had kicked out the last of the Quintessons. It was a three day celebration when people had visited their home clans. It was something like Christmas because they put up decorations and exchanged gifts, but it was a lot like Fourth of July too. Shimmer and Bee were too young to remember, but Chromia told them how it had been in the old days. Those were good memories. Prime and Ratchet contributed some stories, too, drawing Chromia away from thinking too much about Ironhide and Arcee.

Sideswipe and Flareup spent much of the evening together. Georgie thought they were good together. Flareup had certainly come out of her shell a little now that he was paying attention to her and she had her sister back. Taking care of her kept him from going crazy worrying about his brother.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Mary's Place by Bruce Springsteen. /A.N._


	9. Politics

(Chapter Nine—Politics)

(2012-Diego Garcia)

Another couple of months went by quietly. The Americans on base were carefully watching the presidential race unfold. The continuing drama around the Republican Party made everyone nervous. Nobody really knew what was going to happen in November, with Obama's poll numbers the way they were.

Prime was working quietly on several worst-case-scenario options, in case someone came into office who put them into an untenable position. Both the Russians and the Chinese had made overtures, and while he kept his options open, he knew one was likely to be as bad as the other. He came down to medbay one morning in February to check on things. Wheeljack's protoform was nearly ready. Chromia was lying in a light recharge while equipment extracted Ironhide's nanobots from her body and collected them in a nutrient solution.

"Ratchet, how much longer do you think you're going to need?"

"Do we have a deadline?"

"I cannot promise anything past the sixth of November, old friend."

Ratchet nodded. "It's always politics, isn't it? We've done all we can do for Wheeljack. This is the last time I'm putting Chromia through this procedure. There aren't enough of Ironhide's nanobots left in her systems now to be worth the risk to her from trying to recover them. Other than that, his protoform is nearly ready as well. Arcee and Mirage are going to need about another month's work each. The twins...unless Que can pull something out of his aft, we'll have to go with undifferentiated base protoforms and pray. Before November is reasonable."

Prime was relieved to hear that. He wanted _all_ his bots on their feet if things came to the absolute worst and they had to flee with what they could carry.

To his surprise, Mearing came to him that afternoon, looking even more serious than usual. She asked Prime to shut the office door. Optimus did so, and then gave her a hand up to the desktop.

"What is it, Director? Has something happened?"

"Officially, no, Prime, which is why I am free to discuss this with you now. I have been approached by people from two of the Republican candidates' camps. Calloway and her religious extremists want you off-world. Prentiss wants to use you against human enemies."

"You just torpedoed your career if either of them wins."

"I know that. It doesn't matter. Anyone in my position serves at the pleasure of the President. I could not do that in either of their administrations. If they win, I'll retire. My concern is for the civilians, and for Will Lennox' family. They're all potential hostages. I'm especially worried for Sara and Annabelle. The rest of them can make a run for the border any time they want. Will can't without deserting, and you and I both know he will never do that. In my worst case scenario he'd eat his gun to protect them from being used against him."

Optimus could very well see that happening. He strongly suspected that Mearing had warned him at the behest of the President. If that was so, the administration was maneuvering to leave things in the best possible situation if they lost the election. That worried him more than anything.

"It may interest you to know that nearly all of the individuals that you mentioned are either of my clan, or debt-bound to me. Sam and I share a spark-debt, and Carly is his mate. Ironhide was Guardian to Will's family. Now that he's gone, that obligation passes to me. Mikaela is Ratchet's apprentice, and Ratchet is of my personal cohort. That places her in my household as well. Shimmer is—I suppose the best I can put it in English is to say that she is my ward. She shares a spark-debt with Georgie, therefore I have an obligation to her as well. Any serious threat against them would leave me with no good options. If Will did ever have to take such an action to protect his wife and child, I would be left with _no_ options in the face of such a betrayal of his honor. Things must never be allowed to deteriorate that far."

Mearing said, "That changes the game."

"This is no game."

"I beg to differ. We are all pieces on a chessboard, Prime. I don't need, or _want _at this point, to know your endgame strategy. But if you need to sacrifice a piece to carry it out—any chess master knows that sometimes it has to be your queen. It may be necessary for me to go to the press on November 7th and reveal things which are classified. If I do that I fully expect to be arrested, tried and executed for treason. I will be proud to do that as your friend and _as my duty to my country._ Should it come to that, you owe me nothing but to honor my memory. Don't take your clan to war for me."

"Charlotte Mearing, it is my honor to call you friend. I won't burden you with any knowledge that you may have to disavow under oath. But know that I will do everything in my power to prevent things from coming to that point. If it should, I swear to put no lives other than my own at risk on your behalf."

Mearing knew that was the best she was going to get. Honor might demand both their lives, and if that meant the young people could live free, it was a price they would both gladly pay. She bowed her head slowly—a _perfectly _executed Cybertronian gesture of profound respect from a warrior whose other obligations prevented going to one knee.

Optimus Prime realized that somewhere in the past few years, "til all are one" had stopped meaning just Cybertronians.


	10. Daybreak Part 1

(Chapter Ten—Daybreak Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

A few days later they prepared to try to bring Wheeljack back to them. The one thing they knew for sure was that it was going to take an incredible amount of energy to rekindle his spark. There was a very real risk that some of them could die in the attempt. If it failed they all might. Nobot had hesitated to volunteer.

They gathered in the mausoleum, where Wheeljack's new protoform lay beside his coffin. A few humans were there, Sam and Carly, Will, Mikaela, and Mearing. The NEST Director would be able to truthfully report what she had seen, which would reinforce the idea of a new bot named in honor of their departed friend.

No one had made a big deal out of it, but it was impossible to keep something this big completely quiet on a base this small. NEST went about their business, no crowds gathered, but they were watching. Waiting for the call.

They joined in a circle. Even Wheelie and Brains had wanted to help. Ratchet had forbidden it, because their sparks were too small for them to have _any _margin of error in something like this. Kaela was holding Wheelie, and Brains stood between her and Mearing.

Prime released the Matrix and hovered it over the protoform. One by one, a ray of light linked each of the bots to it. Each of them called on their clan bond, reaching out to Wheeljack. The light intensified until the humans had to look away.

There was a sudden crackle like static electricity. Most of the bots staggered as if struck by lightning. Jolt captured the free energy and grounded it back to Wheeljack, carefully regulating how fast he let it through although he was burned in the process. A moment later there were shouts and cries of joy as Wheeljack's optics lit up.

He was confused at first, the last thing he remembered was being shot and now he woke up with his family surrounding him. For a moment he thought the war was lost and they were all in the Well of Sparks.

They reassured him through the bond while Prime explained what had happened. Overwhelmed and still weak, he dropped into stasis lock. Since he was stable, Ratchet had them carry him up to medbay before he had a chance to figure out they were in the tomb.

Chromia was the last to leave. She laid her servo on her sparkmate's coffin and prayed, thanksgiving and hope.

Que took his death and rebirth in stride, once he woke up enough to understand what had happened to him. His first concern was for Bumblebee, who had still been alive but in danger of sharing his fate the last he saw. The smaller bot was quick to move into Wheeljack's line of sight and assure him that he was fine. Que thought it was hilarious that he was supposed to be his own namesake, but immediately saw the necessity.

"Ratchet, I just thought of something. If I move back into my old quarters and take up my old job right away, the humans will get suspicious."

"Yes, you're right, but you are clearly a science bot. We wouldn't have anywhere else for you to work anyway."

Carly suggested, "Everybody knows you downloaded "his" last memory backup, so that isn't a problem. Just mention to one of the base gossips how creepy it is to work there, and refuse to even go in your old berthroom. That should throw everybody off the track."

Mikaela thought if you needed a sneaky idea ask Carly. She bit her tongue before she could say anything that catty out loud. They could use a Slytherin or two among all these Gryffindors. It had been a damn good thing they'd had the devious little Brit in Chicago to set Megatron on Sentinel.

If she and Sam had still been together, she never would have thought of that. Even if she had, she didn't know what she would have said to convince Megatron that it would be a _good _idea to tackle Sentinel when he could barely stand. And they would have lost. Fate had a hand in it.

Ratchet examined everyone who had been in the circle. Jolt was self-repairing some scorched cables, and all of them were badly in need of a long recharge. Most frighteningly, all their sparks were depleted of energy. That was what Jolt had channeled. Ratchet estimated it would be at least three weeks before they could do that again without seriously risking permanent injuries. Ratchet sure wasn't going to explain to Ironhide that he let somebody get hurt or worse trying it too soon.

He sat down hard. It had worked. His friend and partner in crime, who had been fraggin' OFFLINE this morning, was now lying on a berth across the medbay alive and well. In a few months' time, Primus willing, Chromia would have her sparkmate back, she and Flareup would have their sister back, they would have Mirage's high-class attitude getting on everyone's nerves, and the Little Twins would get the chance to finish growing up, though he had his doubts if they would ever bother to grow up.

Ratchet kicked everyone out but Mikaela. They were all going to be in recharge shortly whether they wanted to or not, and he wanted someone here to keep an eye on Wheeljack. He dragged himself to a vacant berth and was out cold the minute he lay down.

*-T-F-Rising*

Wheeljack accessed the base wireless and downloaded some basic information—the date and time, for one thing, and the CNN archives since Chicago to get an overview of what had been going on in the world. The devastation in Chicago was horrendous. Seeing it one block at a time as they rolled in was nothing compared to news helicopter photos of the downtown, and the long lists of the known dead and the missing. Just like 9/11, the police and fire departments made up a disproportionate number of casualties, because while everyone else had been running for cover they had been saving other people's lives and losing their own in the process. Links to websites led to page after page after page of pictures of the missing. Most of them were waiting on DNA identification of bones, or the clothing and items found with the bones, but every single family hoped their missing one was alive somewhere.

As had become standard in times of disaster, emergency services and volunteer organizations sent in teams from all over the country and the world, and supplies poured in through organizations like the Red Cross. Some people with the specialized skills needed, like construction workers, just showed up with their tools and equipment and were put to work for however long they could afford to stay. Wheeljack thought rebuilding what the 'Cons had torn down would be a fine way to get back at the glitches who did this to him. He would talk to Prime about volunteering as soon as they had everyone back.

The election was a mess, too. There had been a spike in the President's approval rating after the attack, but now people thought it was taking "too long" to "do something," though Que was having difficulty understanding what exactly they wanted done or what would actually be a reasonable time frame.

The attack on the New York subway was all over the news. Que was not at all surprised that Ratchet had pulled that stunt. But he was curious about the elderly female who had also been involved.

Que recovered a few memories of the time he had spent in the Well, but they were fragmented and fading. Perception as a disembodied spirit had been so different than experiences filtered by physical senses and comprehended by a processor that it just didn't translate. He no longer had a program that could read the files. He held onto the sense of peace that permeated the place, and to the unity he had felt with his clanmates there as they waited. His reunion with his parents and sister, that was something he never wanted to forget either. The rest could wait until he returned. Now it was time to live in this world. To be really, truly alive every klick and savor every nanoklick of it. He doubted he would ever take anything for granted again.

Kaela checked on him. She still had a joyful smile on her face. "You should recharge some more."

She was right, but he had so many questions about how they had pulled this off.

Mikaela just shook her head. "There's time for all that later. Isn't it enough for now that it _happened?_ Shut down and let your levels stabilize. You're still all over the map."

Wheeljack's self-diagnostics confirmed what she was saying. He let himself drift back into recharge.

Kaela had attached ladders to all the tables and berths so she could get where she needed to be without continually pestering Ratchet to be her personal elevator. She climbed down and went to the office she had set up under an equipment table where some wounded bot couldn't lose his balance and step on her. Shop safety took on a whole new meaning around here.

She routed the telemetry feed from the berths to her second monitor. Ratchet's core energy levels worried her. If they were all like that, God forbid a 'Con should poke his head up now. What was out there now, Will and his boys could handle, but she wasn't taking any bets that the Autobots would have the good sense to let them. She understood Ratchet's constant threats to weld his patients to their berths.

She pulled up Mirage's files and started planning the next phase. His cloaking system made things a little more complicated. Instead of the upgrade version that he'd had before, they were giving him an integrated version on the base level that wouldn't interfere with any alt that he wanted to scan. That made for a few different procedures than the others, and a lot of it would be the small-scale work she was doing. She was determined to get every single detail right.

*-T-F-Rising*

Chromia rolled along the beach in alt form. Three weeks was such a short time to seem like forever. Twenty-one solar cycles. Forty-eight joors. Five hundred and four hours. Three thousand six hundred forty-three point three seven three four nine breems. Any way she measured it was _too fraggin' long. _She had always thought of hope as a good thing, but despair didn't nip at her back wheel and scream at her to _do something._

Flareup dropped in beside her. "It's going to be OK, Sister. You just have to hang in for a while longer. You're going to be back with that mech of yours before you know it."

"Yes. And we'll have Arcee back, and Mirage, and the little terrors. I just want it to go by faster. I hurt, Sister, I hurt and I'm so tired of feeling like I'm only half here. If this doesn't work, will you hate me if I go to him?"

She shook her head. "I understand, Chromia. I felt like that with Arcee gone, until Sides and I—last night we interfaced. I don't feel quite so…broken…now."

"I'm glad. If he hurts you, I'll kill him. If I have to haunt him to do it."

"It's going to work. Do you think Hide needs more than a fighting chance to get his aft back to you where he belongs?"

Chromia knew her sister was right. She just had to be patient for a little while longer. "Does that mechfriend of yours know where we can get some high-grade?"

"Oh, I don't need a mech for that. I've got some refining now. Race you back to my quarters!"

"You are _so_ on!"

*-T-F-Rising*

Ratchet told Chromia, "You should let us do the work, Chromia. I'm afraid for you if this fails."

"My dearest oldest friend, if this fails, I'm going with my sparkmate. This is no life. If I go, just give me a kiss goodbye and wish me the happiness I won't ever have alone here."

"Chromia..."

"Don't _Chromia_ me, Ratchet. How long have you known me? There's good reasons why sparkmates die together. I could survive for vorns like this. Is that what you're wishing on me? One way or another, Hide and I are going to be together tomorrow."

"You get to explain that to Optimus."

"I didn't have to. He already knows."

Ratchet sighed. "Ariel."

She nodded. "I can tell you there hasn't been a klick gone by in all these vorns that he hasn't felt her _missing. _But I'm not a Prime, old friend. I don't feel the clan bonds the way he does. Don't try to hold me here. Let me keep _some_ dignity."

Ratchet nodded and stood to draw her close. "Chromia, if I ever had a sister, it would've been you. You know, you and I are the only ones left who remember when we were sparklings?"

"That was a long time ago."

"It was forever ago," he said. "Do you remember the time the three of us were going to run off and join the race circuit?"

"Those punks from Praxia ran us off the track and kicked our afts."

"I remember the punks but I'm pretty sure we kicked _their _afts."

"Sure, Ratchet, you remember it that way if you want to. I was so slagged off at Hide for starting that fight. He came by my place every night for an orn before my old mech got sick of the drama and told me either forgive him or tell him to shove off. He wanted me to find a nice mech from our caste, not hang out with some scrappy kid from the bottom of the chasm!"

He smiled, and let her go, in more ways than one. The longing in her voice told the whole story. It had taken him a long time to learn the hard lesson that sometimes being a friend meant letting go.

*-T-F-Rising*

Chromia watched in an agony of hope and fear as the new protoform came online. The process had worked with Wheeljack. She held to that thought as Ironhide's eyes lit up bright blue. Then he looked directly at her, and their bond flared back to full strength. Only the need to maintain the pretense of ritual kept her from screaming for joy.

After a few moments of silent reunion, she let him know about the fake ritual and that he was supposed to be a new Autobot, his previous form's namesake. She also warned him that they hadn't been able to recover enough of his nanobots to completely restore his original form. Although he wasn't stuck with a blank protoform like the Little Twins, he was going to have to start over reformatted, effectively deaged.

He sent her a burst of reassurance. He had rebuilt himself many times over a particularly hard-knock life, what was once more?

Just as the first time with Wheeljack, the ritual reaffirmed the clan bond between all the participants, a bond they all welcomed.

If there had been any doubt whatsoever that very real bonds formed between Cybertronians and humans, it was shattered forever when they came out in the sun. A tiny figure, barefoot in a yellow sundress, came pelting up the road as fast as her little feet could carry her. When her babysitter, busy with her homework, had refused to let her out of the house and put her in her room to keep her quiet, Annabelle Lennox had poked the screen out of the window and jumped out. She didn't care that her knees were skinned and she had run blisters on her feet. Crying for joy, she raced the wind straight to Ironhide and jumped up as high as she could, knowing he would catch her. He held her against his spark and measured how much she had grown in his absence.

She sobbed, "I missed you! I missed you! Don't you ever, _ever_ leave me again!"

"Shh. I missed you, too, sparkling. I ain't goin' anywhere."

Sara wiped at her eyes, overcome by the emotional reunion. "When I get my hands on that damn Melissa, I'll kill her!"

Will wasn't sure if she meant literally, and he wasn't sure he would do anything about it if she did. That was the last time he was trusting that irresponsible kid to watch Annie.

Ironhide let Annie ride on his shoulder in the middle of the group of bots until they got closer to the HQ where they might start running into other people, then he handed her down to Will.

He looked at her raw feet and set her on his hip. "Doesn't that hurt, kiddo?"

"A little, but I don't hurt no more in here, Daddy." She put her hand on her heart. Will just held her tight and blinked hard. Army colonels didn't cry in front of five-year-olds. Or big crowds of their friends.

Ratchet put Ironhide in one of the private berthrooms, and Flareup mentioned to somebody in the commons that he had kept Chromia for "observation." That gave them one night together with no one asking questions.

The door didn't have a lock on it. Hide welded it shut.

Chromia lay back on the narrow medbay berth. There wasn't room on the damn thing for one bot, much less two, but neither of them cared. The floor or up against a wall would have worked just as well. There was too much distance between them. A millimeter was too much.

Armor plates slid aside eagerly as he covered her. Hardlines found ports, linking processors so deeply that they shared senses. Energon lines and power cables connected. Energy fields merged and played off each other, driving them to distraction.

::I don't remember a whole lot about the Well of All Sparks. I guess it's everything they tell you and more, except for one thing. Everyone else called it home. I wasn't home. This is home. _You_ are my home.:: With that, he drew her up into his unarmored frame. They magna-locked together instinctively for safety as unshielded sparks reached out for one another, merging, healing the last frayed edges of their bond, settling into a long-familiar rhythm. They gave themselves over to sensation and need, to claiming one another all over again, until ecstasy surged into overload.

The next thing Chromia was aware of on any conscious level, Ironhide was still holding her to him. She was crying with relief and happiness and love so overpowering that she couldn't begin to quantify it. He just held her safe in his arms and let her cry it out.

*-T-F-Rising*

A few days later, Simmons walked into Mearing's office and shut the door. Without a word, he laid a manila envelope on her desk. She opened it up. Inside was a picture of presidential hopeful Marianita Calloway and some redheaded girl, in bed together without a stitch on. "What the _hell—?"_

"It's genuine. I made sure of that. The other woman is her secretary, Diana Perry. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

"Who knows about this?"

"You, me, and my old partner Joe Gilmar. Joe's a private investigator now. I put him on Calloway and Prentiss."

"You should have run this by me first, Seymour. Is there a money trail leading back here?"

"Nope. There's no money involved. Joe and I would do anything for each other, anytime. I know you, Charlotte. You'd take a fall for people you care about. My prerogative to do the same thing if I want to. Besides, you know Joe never gets caught. Now that we have proof, you need to know."

Mearing put the pictures back into the envelope, careful to avoid fingerprints. The negatives were in there too.

She had to be careful how she played this or it would blow up in all their faces. For one thing, Optimus would never permit blackmail. He also wouldn't appreciate it if she went behind his back to give him plausible deniability. For another, there were a lot of ways this could go really wrong.

Simmons said, "If she slipped and let Joe get these pictures, he might not be the only one."

"I don't ordinarily care if a gay person is in the closet, and I wouldn't out them. But she's preaching that gay people are going to hell and taking the rest of the country with them," Mearing said. "I really don't like hypocrites."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I'd like to slap her face with it. But what I have to do is go to Prime. It's his decision where to go from here."

"I could give it to the administration, Charlotte. I still know some people."

"How is that different from using it ourselves?"

"None. But it doesn't come back on us. Or we could sit on it until after the convention."

"Or we could do the right thing. That would be different."

"Who knows? It might just work."

"Are there any other copies out there?" Mearing asked.

"No. That's everything."

Mearing took it to Prime's office. "There's been a development."

"Show me." One thing he couldn't do easily was handle paper. There was a reason they used data pads.

After looking through the photos, he subspaced the envelope. Charlotte said, "Those are the only copies. The only other people who know about it are two men that I trust with my life."

"Thank you for bringing it to my attention."

"May I ask what you intend to do?" She was Prime's de facto chief of staff, in spite of the incredible conflict of interest that created for her. She knew it, Prime knew it, the President knew it. She had to walk a razor's edge where she was told only as much as she needed to know to get the job done. But if he was about to do anything that would require damage control, she needed to know that.

Optimus considered. "I'm going to use it as a conversation starter."

Mearing nodded.

(Continued in Chapter 10—Daybreak Part 2)


	11. Daybreak Part 2

(Chapter 10—Daybreak Part 2)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

Forty-eight hours later, Prime drove up to a large mansion near Nashville, Tennessee. A sign with the Ten Commandments on it had a prominent place on the front lawn. There were several security guards behind a locked gate.

A moment later, he saw an upstairs curtain twitch. The light in that room went out, and shortly a red car came out of the garage. One of the guards opened the gate.

He followed the red car away from the city for about twenty minutes, before it turned into a private drive lined with huge old oak trees that led to an old plantation house. Marianita Calloway got out and waited as he stopped about fifty feet away and opened his passenger door.

Calloway hesitated only a moment before she walked over. She climbed into the cab with the practiced ease of a farm girl used to heavy machinery. She hadn't always been a woman of wealth and power. "What's this about?"

"There's an envelope with some photos and negatives in the glove box. If you decide to burn it without looking at it, that's the last anyone will ever hear of it."

"You used Diana's name to get this meeting. What do you want?"

"Just a show of good faith, Ms. Calloway. And a bit of advice to close your curtains all the way from now on."

She turned red as a beet when she caught the undertone of humor in his voice. "You could have used this to get me out of the race. Why didn't you?"

"A scandal like that would benefit no one in the long run. Your faction won't go away just because I might embarrass their latest rising star. They would find someone else. Using it later in the campaign once your party selects a candidate, when it might actually affect the outcome of the election, would be wrong on another level. It is not my place to try to influence the will of your people when you have done nothing to harm anyone."

"What do you want?"

"To understand," he replied. "I can see that you want nothing to do with a war that had nothing to do with you. But as Chicago proved, our leaving would do nothing to change the actions of our enemies. What do you hope to accomplish?"

"I want to preserve our God-fearing American way of life," she said earnestly. "Our faith is under attack from all sides already. What's going to happen when we have people from other planets coming in here bringing in other cultures and religions that aren't even human, much less American? I don't think you mean to do any harm, but your presence here _is_ harmful."

"Senator Calloway, I respect your culture and your religion. All I'm asking for is the same consideration in return. My faction believes strongly in every sentient being's right to self-determination, including the right to worship their own god according to the dictates of their conscience. Doesn't your God expect His followers to make a decision to follow Him of their own free will?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate people coming in here and bringing their false gods with them," she replied.

His scans showed her heart rate and blood pressure were through the roof. She was _terrified_ of him, yet she still held herself with dignity and grace. Her beliefs were hard for him to understand, but she had the courage of her convictions nevertheless. "I admit that I don't fully understand the religions of Earth, and I won't pretend to. I believe Primus—our name for God—reveals Himself to each of us in a way that we can understand. What would be the point in trying to push my beliefs on other people, who already have perfectly good beliefs of their own?"

"So you came by these pictures, and it never crossed your mind to do anything but give them to me?"

"I'd be a liar if I said that. If you get elected, you'll be in a position to do my people a lot of harm. But two wrongs don't make a right."

"No, they don't," she agreed, surprised. "I'll admit you're not what I expected."

"Neither are you."

"After seeing these, I can understand why you'd think that of me. I am a sinner, Optimus Prime. My Bible tells me that everyone sins and comes short of the glory of God. Diana and I sinned and repented. I can only thank you for refusing to use my sin against me."

"I don't believe that what you did in those pictures was wrong. I do believe that lying about it to yourself and to the people that you're asking to vote for you is wrong. Condemning other people for doing what you're doing yourself is wrong."

She addressed only his last point. "I believe what the Bible tells me, and _Christ_ condemned homosexuality, not me. I pray that He will deliver me from my sins."

"Forgive me, Ms. Calloway, but I can tell that I upset you. If nothing else, understand this, I would never do you any harm. I am no threat to humans in the first place. But over and above that, we disagree over ideas. As a sentient being you have every right. I would never harm anyone for that."

She calmed down. "I believe you. I'm sorry I misjudged your intentions. But when you contacted me with these, I had no idea what to think."

"If I found out your secret, others might as well."

"God's will be done. You've given me a lot to think about and pray about this evening."

"I've brought you out here without your security team. Allow me to see you home."

"Thank you, sir, I appreciate that."

She walked back to her car and drove home. After her gate closed behind her, Optimus turned back towards Washington DC. They really hadn't settled anything, and if she won the election he anticipated a tough few years to follow. Still, they had started out suspicious and wary of one another, and parted in mutual respect. That was a beginning.

*-T-F-Rising*

Over the next few months, the process was repeated, first with Arcee then Mirage, finally with the twins. That was the most dangerous, because since they were in so many ways the same spark, it was necessary to call them back at the same time. That was the main reason they had to wait until last, so they would have more bots to contribute the needed life force. In the end there was nothing they could do to restore their original frames, but by then they had become skilled enough to guide their sparks to the undifferentiated protoforms without any of their nanobots to serve as an anchor.

In all the joy of reunion, they mourned Jazz, but after everything that had happened no one doubted that they would all be together again someday. They finally put the hell that had been Chicago behind them and set their sights on the future.

Arcee didn't have a problem. If the humans thought she was now the youngest sister instead of Flareup's twin, no one questioned that she was one of the sisters. It was just natural for Chromia and Flareup to take her in. She took the same alt she had before, only this time she decided to be a dark green.

Mirage had changed a lot. He had got his priorities straight and found his old elitist attitude to be excess baggage. The society that had fostered his old prejudices no longer existed. Only in retrospect, he realized how much he had missed by letting obsolete considerations of caste and class interfere with forming cohort bonds within his clan. He started hanging out with Bee and Shimmer. He found a fellow reader in Georgie, and let her open up the world of human literature to him.

The twins came back marginally quieter and more...sparkling-like, in some ways. Ratchet theorized that they were catching up on some of the childhood that the war had taken away from them, and that a lot of it was their way of dealing with the trauma of their horrific offlining. In any case, though they scanned a couple of hummers, those didn't "take" as adult primary alts. Ratchet decided the best thing to do was leave them alone and do what was necessary day by day to help them work through it. As a former member of their gang, Shimmer was closest to them. She could get them to talk before anyone else could. No one was surprised at all when a sibling bond formed between her and the Little Twins.

Ironhide and Chromia had a serious problem. They wanted to be together 24/7, but with the need to maintain their cover they couldn't even live in the same quarters. Chromia had clearly been so deeply in mourning that her family had her on suicide watch. If the two of them just took up where they left off, in such close quarters where everyone knew everyone else's business, it would have given the whole game away. The only solution was for Ironhide to court his sparkmate all over again.

Ironhide chose a different alt than his old Topkick. GMC had discontinued that model and there weren't as many of them on the road anymore. A 3500HD with a few custom mods would do what he needed and wouldn't attract as much attention.

He and Will were careful to keep some distance for a while and let it look like a new friendship was forming on its own. Only Annabelle refused to treat Ironhide any differently, and if anyone tried to tell her so, she would cheerfully kick them in the shins for being mean. Nobody argued with a five-year-old who had her mind made up, but there wasn't much danger that anyone would take her too seriously either, more fools they.

Meanwhile Ironhide started making a pest out of himself around Chromia, just like when they had first met so long ago, making all kind of excuses to be where she was going to be just to say hello. For a good month she pretended to be oblivious. Arcee and Flareup then got in on the act, making sure she noticed him.

By then it was late summer and the American presidential race was in full swing. The news was full of the GOP convention in Tampa. Prentiss and Calloway were in a dead heat, with the Tea Party backing Calloway, and the old-line hawks and monied interests behind Prentiss. Everyone in Ops was keeping an eye on it.

Mearing watched all the excitement and pageantry of a national convention. After the Battle of Chicago, people were looking for a good excuse to party, and the conventions were it. Someone from Washington State was introducing a favorite son candidate, a moderate state senator named Bennett Colegrove. She explained that this allowed the state's delegation to negotiate with the front runners for their support in the final vote, as well as honor a well-loved state political figure. Colegrove was planning to retire soon.

There was some excitement on the floor. Optimus saw that it was centered on the Tennessee delegation and copied the feed to his personal receiver so he could zoom in on that. He saw Calloway talking to one of the delegates, who seemed to be the one in charge of the others. Diana Perry waited a short distance away, quiet and seemingly invisible, holding Calloway's briefcase. Most of the cameras turned away, but he found one raw feed that stayed on them.

A man next to Diana put his hand in his coat pocket. Optimus swore when he pulled out a gun, but no one else in Ops knew what was happening.

No one in the hall saw the gun in time but Diana. She took a half step between Calloway and the gunman. The gun fired and she fell.

The convention hall went crazy. Men in black suits seemed to appear out of thin air, swarming the gunman, getting Calloway out of there. Optimus saw the stricken look in her eyes as she tried to get away from them, to get to Diana, but she didn't have a chance. Cops and paramedics were there a few seconds later.

He put a recording of the raw feed up for everyone else to see what had happened.

Mearing isolated an image of the shooter and sent it to a friend back home to run it through an ID program.

Then something amazing happened. Diana started moving around and tried to sit up, in obvious pain but there was no blood. A police officer had the briefcase, which had stopped the bullet. Determined, she stood up and waved at the nearest camera like a NASCAR driver crawling out of a wreck, letting Calloway know she was all right. Then the paramedics made her get on a gurney and took her out of the hall.

Since no one had been killed and the gunman was in custody, once everyone was kicked out and made to walk through a metal detector to get back in, the convention went on.

Mearing's friend got back to her. The shooter was a member of the Tennessee delegation who was also a member of Calloway's ultraconservative church. She said, "Erik, you'd better report this to the Florida Attorney General's office, in case the locals don't have an ID yet."

Simmons whispered so only Mearing and Optimus could hear him, "Wonder how long til the shit hits the fan?"

Mearing said, "I give it a couple of hours. Calloway will hole up with her campaign team to decide what to do, then her speech writer will need some time. But she's out of the race, probably out of the Senate as well. All she can do now is try to minimize the scandal."

Optimus said, "That man attempted to murder her and nearly killed an innocent woman. If his reasons were what we think they were, isn't this a hate crime? I see no way to minimize that."

Simmons opined, "It's only a hate crime if anyone finds out why he did it. Otherwise he's just another nut with a gun. It's in everyone's interest for him to just be a nut with a gun. That might be all that ever gets out."

Prime asked Mearing, "Where do we stand with Prentiss?"

"He's still insisting that if you want the backing of the US military, you have to be under orders from the Pentagon. He wants to use you to pacify the Mideast."

Optimus shook his head. "That is insanity. Even if I were willing to go along with it, that would turn into a mass slaughter before they would surrender to us, if they ever did. That aside, the odds are always with the defenders, especially with defenders who are more than willing to martyr themselves in order to win. Did he learn nothing from the Decepticons' loss in Chicago? Anyone with sufficient firepower can take a city. Holding it against the determined opposition of its people is something else yet again."

"He doesn't care how many people die as long as they end up with the oil," Simmons said.

Charlotte said, "Let's don't do the conspiracy theories, Seymour."

"Theory, my ass. During the first energy crisis in the Carter years, Sector 7 wanted to have some scientists at MIT "invent" the energon cube. The oil companies had industrial spies there. When they found out people would be able to buy something they could put on a sunny windowsill and run their cars off it, they went ballistic. They threatened ten dollar a gallon gasoline before the technology could get out there. They would have thrown the whole country into a full blown depression. That isn't a theory, it's a fact. My father was there. The conspiracy theory is, I believe but I can't prove they murdered him to shut him up, and if they knew he'd told me about it, I'd be dead too."

Mearing said, "You could have told me that _when it happened."_

"And get you killed too, for no good reason? If I'd ever got proof the whole damn world would have known about it. There _was_ no proof. Dad had a heart attack. Mom opened the deli with his insurance. End of story." Simmons stared out the window, hands gripping the catwalk rail so hard his knuckles were dead white. His face could have been carved from marble.

Mearing's voice went cold. "If there is proof out there, I swear, I will never stop looking for it. No state in the Union has a statute of limitations on murder."

Simmons said, "As for Prentiss, if he gets the nomination, this has to go public before the election. The American people have the right to know what he wants to do in their name before they go to the ballot box. That's simple right and wrong, no matter what it costs any of us. That's my take on it, anyway."

Mearing agreed. "That would be my advice as well, Prime. I don't believe we'd have a right to sit on information like that if he has a shot at the White House."

He nodded. Let the chips fall where they may, if they knew someone was determined to set his country on a course of action that would lead to mass civilian casualties and said nothing, they would be just as guilty.

The humans all went to get something to eat, while they waited for more news. They all took their headsets with them to keep up with developments. There were all kinds of theories of the crime flying around the commons. Mearing was surprised that Carly figured out it had something to do with Calloway and her secretary being together. She was basing it entirely off the news footage of Calloway and Perry's actions during the crisis, but Mearing was surprised at how well she read people. Once this blew over, she decided it would be a good idea to pull Carly into Ops. The girl had the makings of a good analyst, possibly even a field agent considering the nerve that little stunt in Chicago had taken.

A ten minute warning that Calloway was about to address the convention sent everybody scurrying for a TV. Everyone with Ops clearance came up there because they got the best news coverage.

When Calloway walked out to the podium, Optimus saw the same brave woman who had sat in his cab and argued religion with someone she had every reason to believe should want her dead. She was determined and she was mad as Pit.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

The hall erupted with shouts, cheers, applause and laughter—drowned out by an ear-splitting chorus of full-throated rebel yells from the Tennessee delegation.

"My secretary and close friend, Diana Perry, saved my life today at the risk of her own. Thank God Almighty, she happened to be holding my briefcase. It stopped a .45 caliber round at point blank range, leaving her with several broken ribs, a broken wrist, and a tremendous amount of respect for Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson, but no life-threatening injuries. Diana, if you're watching, thank you from the bottom of my heart."

There was another round of noise, and this time the racket was all for Diana's gallant act of heroism. There were rebel yells from all over the hall, accompanied by a cacophony of boat horns and whistles.

Calloway waited for the uproar to settle down. "Now we get down to why I believe that gentleman did this. Settle down and listen till I'm finished. Yesterday an individual approached me with an offer to keep some information quiet if I got out of the race. I told him to go to hell. Now the authorities have asked me not to give out any information about that individual other than that the person is safely in police custody.

There's only one way to deal with blackmailers. Hold onto your hats, y'all. I'm about to blow the roof off of this place. I am a lesbian. That person had proof. When he threatened to show y'all some pictures none of us would want kids to see, I told him to go ahead but let the networks know ahead of time so they could be careful what they showed on TV. Thought I was kidding, didn't you? You don't get to hold the White House hostage, I don't care _what_ you know or think you know about me! Y'all don't know what you just started! _Bring it on!_

A few months ago, I got some very good advice from a very wise person that keeping this from the voters was wrong. I should have listened then, and I apologize to every one of the people of the United States for that.

I am not going to step out of this race. Somebody just took a shot at me. You don't do that to a Tennessee girl and expect her to turn tail and run. But at the same time, I know I just disappointed a lot of you folks real bad. I'm releasing all my delegates to vote your conscience if the law in your state allows. Do what I should have done, what I pledge to do from now on in the White House or out of it. Think it over, and when this comes to a vote tomorrow, do what you know in your heart to be the right thing instead of what looks easy.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen." She stepped down from the podium and a phalanx of secret service agents whisked her out of the hall.

Prentiss gave a short speech then, expressing his thanksgiving that Calloway and Perry had been miraculously delivered from an assassin's bullet. He said that the election was still about the same issues, economics and defense, and reiterated that he had the experience and the right ideas to take on those problems.

After that, the talking heads took over.

Lennox said, "Well, frag me sideways. I didn't think anything politicians could do would surprise me, but I sure didn't see that coming."

Mearing admitted, "Neither did I, I didn't expect her to just out herself like that. The hell of it is, she'd make a better president now than she would have before this happened. Optimus, with your permission I'd like to release that tape of Prentiss' campaign manager's conversation with me now. We may still be able to get it on tonight's news before the vote tomorrow."

"Let's review it one last time and be certain nothing that the US government still considers classified is on it. I do not see a reason at this point for anyone to risk treason charges over details when the knowledge of our existence has become public."

Lennox said, "If I'm not on this need to know list and you're about to drop another bombshell in the press, you should read me in now. I need enough information to deal with any security issues that crop up."

Prime said, "Agreed, Will. You and your people could end up having some extremely serious decisions to make before next January." He turned to the crowd. "Could I have your attention, please. I need the room with the team leaders. Simmons, you stay too."

There was a chorus of "Yes, Prime," and the people who weren't team leaders or Seymour Simmons left Ops. That was Ratchet, and Sideswipe, who was still officially 2iC and Mearing could not officially know any more than that. Optimus patched Ironhide in though private comms.

The scene of the tape was Mearing's office in Washington, DC. She stood to greet an older man that she identified as Prentiss' Chief of Staff, Emery Bodine. The conversation used a lot of buzz words like patriotism and military preparedness, but he made their intentions clear to use the Autobots against Mideastern nations, and he also stated that their supply problems would be over if they cooperated. And that things would become very difficult for them if they did not.

Prime said, "Director Mearing, inform the White House, then release the tape to the press."

"Yes, sir. The press will want a statement from you about this. You need to be _very _careful how you word it."

Optimus nodded. "I intend to state that while we stand by our agreement to defend the United States, especially against aggression by others of our species, we will take action only for defensive reasons."

Will cautioned, "Don't paint us into a corner. If somebody else decides to build another enrichment plant to make nukes, we might have to go knock it down like we did the last one. Somebody will have to, and we can minimize collateral damage better than anyone else."

"That _was_ defensive," Simmons said. "Nobody was trying to overthrow any governments like Prentiss wants to do."

Ratchet pointed out, "You can call any Pit-be-damn thing defensive. Saw _that_ enough on Cybertron."

Optimus said, "That's true, Ratchet, but it doesn't mean I'd _agree_ to just any Pit-be-damned thing simply because some politician labeled it defensive."

"Just saying. As long as you leave the door open to any military involvement on their behalf, they'll always want more. Any country that gives us shelter will."

Mearing said, "I don't think you have a way around giving the mouse that cookie, Ratchet. I do agree that's the best way to put it, though, Prime."

President Obama wanted to talk to Optimus Prime before the tape went public. Optimus took the call over a highly secure private line, so nobody else knew what was said. He came away from it with the President's blessing to release the tape. No matter what political considerations were involved, the bottom line was, it was the right thing to do.

When the tape and Prime's short statement hit the news, all hell broke loose at the convention. Some of the delegates were bound to vote according to the results of the primaries in their states, but that wasn't enough to give the nomination to either party. The rest of them were arguing at the top of their lungs and switching sides every fifteen minutes.

Calloway had been writing her concession speech when her campaign manager heard the tape and, with a shouted curse, turned up the TV.

After watching the tape, and Optimus' statement, Calloway ripped up the concession speech. "Mike, I want to go out there and ask those fine people to vote for me. We're still running a campaign until they get done counting them up. Somebody who wants to start a war of aggression, take over the world and kill thousands of innocent people just to make a bunch of oil companies richer does not need to be President of the United States, and I mean to do everything I can to stop that from happening."

"Yes, ma'am!"

About eleven o'clock that evening, Prentiss addressed the convention, claiming that Bodine had acted without his knowledge and had been fired on the spot.

Bodine issued a statement confirming that. His lawyers were claiming that he couldn't be arrested for blackmail because the Autobots weren't technically persons under the law, and some legal experts thought he might have a case. They brought up the history involved with slavery, the three-fifths compromise, and the fourteenth amendment. It would all have to be settled by the Supreme Court.

At eleven forty-five, Calloway made another speech, calling upon the delegates to look beyond their prejudices, accept the challenges that faced the country, and tackle them head-on. She had been on her feet for nearly twenty hours straight, shot at, terrified by her lover's injury, and everything since had been an emotional roller coaster. But she'd hit her second wind and her energy filled the hall. When she told them everyone fell, and everyone could get up and try again with the help of God, she had them all on their feet screaming. When she told them they could hold onto obsolete and failed technologies, or they could rise up together and embrace the future and fly, guided by the values that shaped the past—they did. When she asked for their vote, the majority of the delegates started a chant of _Callie! Callie! Callie! _

Not everyone joined in. Many of the delegates would have voted for anyone other than a gay person, no matter who the other candidate happened to be. There weren't enough of them to turn back the tide, however. Clearly the next day's vote would affirm what everyone already knew. The Republican candidate for President of the United States in 2012 was going to be the junior Senator from the State of Tennessee, Marianita Calloway.

There were a lot of Republicans on Diego Garcia, and Optimus Prime could see, like the Democrats had four years before, they had found somebody to vote _for_ instead of against_. _And no matter who won the election, in January the White House would be in good hands.

_(A.N.: Thanks to Dog Soup for being my first reviewer in Transformers fandom!_

_I was inspired to write the political part of this chapter by the last-season West Wing episode "Two Weeks Out." While the episode involved a briefcase rather than an envelope of photographs, the theme of potentially explosive information and what to do with it is the same._

_The next chapter may be a few days. I had to rewrite it and it's taking longer than I expected./A.N.)_


	12. Nexus Part 1

(Chapter 11—Nexus)

(2013—Diego Garcia, Washington DC)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

After that, things quieted down for a while. There were no leads to where Sunstreaker and First Aid might be, but that didn't mean they stopped looking. One of the things the NEST team and the Autobots had in common was the determination never to leave a brother or sister behind. Since the Battle of Chicago, nobody cared in the slightest which side of the commons the missing people were from.

Ever since Chromia had escaped from the Decepticons in Atlanta, Georgia had become a common vacation spot for NEST team members. They had placed energon detectors on major highways and strategic back roads in an ever widening circle around the old warehouse where Chromia had been held. There had been no sign of a continuing Decepticon presence in the warehouse. Therefore the theory was that they had wised up and they weren't holding prisoners in their base. But Lennox and Prime suspected that the base was in the area, and that First Aid and Sunstreaker were also being held nearby. The Decepticons were very likely using alt forms, and probably not known primary alts, to travel back and forth. A major Autobot presence in the area would probably scare them into flight and get the prisoners offlined. But the NEST team could drive all over the area in nondescript rented vehicles, stop somewhere to change a tire or snap some vacation pictures, and drop a camouflaged detector by the roadside while they were at it. It was slow, patient work, and every day that passed was harder for Sideswipe. If it hadn't been for Flareup, they didn't know what might have become of him.

In May, Ironhide moved back in with Chromia. That was a relief for both of them. Keeping up the pretense of a courtship had been fun at times, but it was hard for sparkmates to pretend to be anything else. The only way to keep from finishing each other's sentences and so forth was to keep the bond damped when they were in public. That was basically every waking moment. It was difficult, unpleasant, and downright unhealthy over an extended period.

Georgie started making some progress, but in early June she slipped while transferring from her chair to the shower seat. It turned out she had re-broken her hip. Some tests revealed that the bone was dying. She had another operation to remove the dead bone. After that, she knew she wasn't ever going to get out of her chair again, and the incision didn't want to heal.

She insisted that after a while that Dr. Parker let her out of the hospital to go home. There wasn't any more the hospital could do for her and she wanted to be around what had become her family.

Shimmer took her back to her quarters and sat on the side of her bed in stealth form.

Georgie said, "This last scare made me think. When I'm gone, will you take Scramble and Fleabag?"

"Of course I would, but they let you out of the hospital, didn't they?"

"Baby girl, I'm older than you and Bee are, according to Ratchet. That's young for a bot, but it's old for a human. I'm so glad I got to know you. I never had any kids, that choice got taken away from me. But I think I got the chance to find out what it might've been like. This past year has been the best time I ever had in my life."

"I love you, Georgie. I never knew my grandparents. But I think if I'd had a grandmother, she would have been a lot like you."

"Friends are the family you choose," Georgie replied.

Shimmer got her evening pills and brought her supper tray. They sat watching TV for a while, then Shimmer got Georgie's knitting for her and took the tray away.

Georgie felt a sudden heaviness, then a crushing pain in her chest. She knew it was time, and she was thankful that she'd had that conversation with Shimmer. There was a beautiful sunset over the peaceful ocean. It was a good day to die. The brilliant reds and blues faded to a darkness deeper than night.

She found herself walking—_walking—_towards a light more beautiful and brilliant than any star. Because she could, she broke into a run, jumping and dancing on glorious rays of light. This was _home. _And then she was running as fast as she could into her mother's arms.

She had all the time in the world to catch up with her family, and meet a whole crowd of her mom's relatives that she had never known. A lot of old friends were there too.

She looked in vain for her husbands. Her mom explained as gently as she could that they had moved on already.

With the peace of this place surrounding her, she accepted that with more grace than sorrow. She was thankful for the love they had shared, and wished them happiness. But she had a sense that her journey wasn't finished.

"What do I do now, Mama?"

Her mother's eyes sparkled. "Whatever you want to do, child. You can stay here—but I don't think that suits you quite yet. You can go look for your destiny."

"I thought this was heaven."

"It _is. _You can't cram heaven into a little bitty box, Georgie. I've been here eighty-five years and I haven't even _started_ to look around. It ain't all pearly gates and streets of gold. But there's one thing I found out. You can't take away from forever if you leave it for a little bit. You're just here for a visit. Whatever's calling you, girl, go find out what it is. Home will be here when you get done."

Georgie hugged her and kissed her cheek, then got up and started walking. A path led for a long way through a meadow beside a peaceful stream, but then she came to a fork in the path. One way continued along the stream. Somehow she knew, that way was serenity and rest. But the other way climbed higher. That way was duty and honor, service and sacrifice. She took a while to make up her mind, then she started climbing.

The path soon turned steep and rocky. She wanted a walking stick—and nearly rolled down the hillside in surprise when a bo staff appeared in her hands! She laughed at herself for being silly. There were no limitations here! Still grinning, she continued on up the path.

The trail narrowed and dropped off steeply. She wondered what would happen if she fell. Or would she just fly?

Georgie had a sense that whether she could fly or not wasn't the issue right now. This path led to the answers she sought.

At the top of the ridge, there was a strong wind blowing. It whipped at her beaded hair and the plain white linen shift she was wearing. The bracing cold blew through her like the November wind off Lake Michigan, and she turned her face into it.

She thought about all the people who had lost their lives in Chicago. Before she could even put her questions and doubts into words, the mist in the valley below her cleared for a moment, and she could see in the distance a city skyline, and she _knew_.

**They were here.**

She let out a loud shout that was half _kiai _and half hallelujah as she understood, finally, there was _nothing_ to be afraid of. Death was the greatest illusion of all.

The path led down into a rocky valley. The road widened considerably and wound its way through stone spires the size of skyscrapers. A cool mist diffused the light into soft shades of yellow and rose and blue. She rested her staff on one shoulder as she journeyed on.

A noise overhead drew her attention. It had been soft, but—metal on rock? All her old instincts, honed in the dojo and in more than one street fight, warned her that she was _in trouble._

For a few seconds she just stood, reaching out and _up _with all her senses. Then something huge came leaping down at her, and she was moving faster than she ever had. She leapt over a sword blade that was wider than her whole body, balanced on it for a second, then jumped for a narrow ledge up one of the boulders. Staying on the ground was just asking to get stepped on!

She had often watched the NEST agents training against the Autobots. Most of them stayed out of the way. Get clear, take aim, and take your shot. But then there had been a few like Lennox, Graham, and Kenoi who were perfectly able to turn their size from a limitation to an advantage. They would get right up under a bot to take advantage of places where armor plating was weaker. She had especially seen Lennox climb right up Sideswipe one time to splatter a paintball point blank right between two armor plates, an unambiguous instant kill.

This guy was covered with spikes and sharp blades, but they were designed to keep someone his own size from grappling with him. The sword came at her with the force of a pile-driver and she jumped, running down the blade and up his forearm. She was halfway to his shoulder before he realized what she was up to. Before he could slap at her, she dodged between several spikes and swung to his pauldron. He slapped at her then, but she dodged between his fingers and leapt again, swinging and climbing to the back of his neck. She shouted a _kiai_ as she drove her staff between two plates. And stopped a fraction of an inch away from his main processor cable.

With untold ages of power and authority in his voice, he asked, "What are you waiting for? Do you think I am going to give you another chance?"

Georgie made another leap to another rock ledge and landed with an easy, fluid grace. "Whoever told you that I have to wait for people to _give_ me chances?"

Her opponent sheathed his blade and bowed to her just like they were in a dojo somewhere. "Well fought, Sensei."

She bowed in return. "Thank you. Do I pass this portion of your test, Prime?"

"You do. I was less concerned with whether or not you would win, than with how you would choose to win or lose."

She dropped off the ledge, tucked into a roll and landed on her feet, dropping to one knee to ground the impact, and rose gracefully. No limits.

"Now can you tell me what all this is about?"

He extended an open hand, a courteous offer of a ride or a lift that she had seen a hundred times a day around the HQ. She stepped up and he carried her some distance down the valley. She couldn't see anything different about the place they finally stopped, but he let her down then sat down leaning against one of the boulders.

Georgie sat on her heels leaning casually on her bo staff. "Prime, you have me at the disadvantage. I know you're one of the Six, but not which one."

"I am Nova."

"You're the one they called Starfarer. Builder of the first Ark, and designer of the jump point network that allowed your people to explore the galaxy."

"Yes."

"What interest could I possibly hold for you, Prime?"

"You are a warrior, but mercy is more important to you than pride. That in itself is enough to capture my interest."

"Never wanted to do any harm if I had a choice," she replied. "This time I had one."

He nodded. "Are you going to stay?"

"Hmm. The way you put that question leads me to think there's more than one answer. But until a few months ago I thought this was a one-way ticket."

"It can be, if you wish, but not necessarily. If you want to stay you have that choice. But you can also choose to be reborn. I don't think you're finished living, or learning, or making a difference."

Georgie didn't dispute that. The living and learning she figured could be accomplished here. The making a difference, not so much. "You, me, that information: connected how?"

"The survivors of my race are going to be based on Earth for a long time. Possibly it will be our home as well. They need a better understanding of humans. Just as importantly, the humans who are willing to learn will need someone who can see both sides to help them understand us. How would you like to be reborn as a Cybertronian?"

Georgie considered that—for about half a second. "I get to go back home?"

Nova Prime nodded. "I'll show you."

Georgie stood and walked with him to a space between two mammoth boulders. He gestured. The air between the stones shimmered and seemed to solidify, then turned mirror-like. In this surface she could see Ratchet and Mikaela putting the finishing touches on a new protoform.

"That's..._me?"_

The ancient Prime nodded. "If you wish it to be."

Georgie nodded. "OK. I'll do my best."

*-T-F-Rising*

Shimmer heard Fleabag yowling and Scramble screaming for help. She shifted to her mini form and ran through the human quarters to see what was wrong. She found Georgie lying on the sofa with her knitting in her lap, as if she had just dozed off. But Shimmer knew better. Her dear friend was gone. She picked up the cat and dropped her other servo to the back of Scramble's neck, while she told Prime what had happened. There was a brief swarm of medics, then someone recorded the time and someone else pulled a sheet over the empty vessel that remained. Shimmer fell to her knees, arms around a keening Scramble, and cried. Kaela knelt beside her and put her arm around her shoulders, mourning too. That old lady had become a part of all their lives.

After some discussion how best to honor their friend, the Autobots decided to make her a part of the first true progenitive ritual, and if they were granted a sparkling, to name it after her. Her casket stood beside the waiting, dormant protoform. Only Shimmer and Bumblebee were excluded from the circle. If something went wrong and everyone else died kindling a new spark, they decided that the two youngest Autobots should live to raise the new sparkling. Will, Kaela, Sam, and a pregnant Carly stood with the young couple while the others began.

There was a flash of blinding light from the Matrix. The twins rebooted, Ratchet and Flareup almost did. Prime staggered, he had put most of the energy into the ritual, much more than any of the others except Ironhide and Chromia. They had matched him almost step by step. Ironhide locked his knees and caught Chromia, lowering both of them to the floor before either of them could fall down.

Georgie opened her eyes, tried to blink and...couldn't. She remembered a pain in her chest, which was now thankfully absent. She remembered a warm presence of power beyond measure, full of love and wisdom. There was something about a choice to be made. Details were coming back slowly, but it still didn't make much sense. "Shimmer? Where am I, what happened?"

A couple of more people rebooted when they recognized her voice. Shimmer took a half step forward, and said in wonder and joy, _"Georgie?" _

Will stared. He had given up faith a long time ago as a bad habit somewhere between the barren mountains of Afghanistan, and the green fields and the white stones of Arlington. Too many people had died in front of him calling out for mercy from God by whatever name they called Him, too many widows had screamed to the heavens for the reason why and then fell sobbing in his arms with only mocking silence for an answer. He left religion to the priests and the imams and did his job in the here and now. But right here, right now was proof in his hands that there was something more than empty silence for _all_ of them, not just the children of Cybertron. It wasn't heaven the way he'd heard in Sunday School and it wasn't reincarnation the way the gurus told it, but it was hope and it was a fact.

Ratchet pulled himself together and ran preliminary scans. Everything was well within acceptable margins. He decided to treat her just like all the others who had been returned to them.

She spent a couple days in Medbay, mostly being fussed over by Shimmer and Kaela. Then she moved into a berthroom on the other side of the commons. For now there wasn't much there. She had Kaela donate most of her old stuff to charity. Scramble and Fleabag were technically living next door in Shimmer's room, but they were usually in the commons and Fleabag took right up with Georgie again. How the cat knew who she was, was anyone's guess. Her new body was absolutely nothing whatsoever like her old one, so there was no logical reason the cat should have been able to identify her. But the second he laid eyes on her, he just knew. Georgie had always heard cats were psychic. Now she tended to agree.

That evening they sat around in the commons. Georgie knew she had a lot to learn, and the best way to do that was keep her mouth shut and her optics and audio open. Right now the discussion was about her best choices for her first alt form. Since they didn't know if it would turn out to be an intermediate juvenile form like the Little Twins' hummers, or a permanent adult alt, it was a serious decision.

Optimus advised Georgie, "The war is over. Yes, we will have trouble from Decepticon holdouts and renegades for some time to come, but that doesn't need to define you. Bumblebee and Shimmer chose their first alts based on what they needed in wartime. But you have time and all the choices in the world. _Your_ world."

Chromia said, "On Cybertron-that-Was, a femme was expected to choose a form for its grace and beauty, over and above usefulness. Then the war took over everything and there weren't any civilians any more, just warriors and victims. I wasn't going to be anybody's fraggin' victim anymore and I wasn't going to let my little sisters be victims either. But our first forms limited the choices we had later. You have to be able to defend yourself from Prime's holdouts so my advice would be don't pick _any_ bike unless you really want to get stuck with a little alt like that. We're hit and run fighters, not heavy front liners, and sometimes that just isn't enough. So we figured out how to combine as Triad."

Ironhide snorted. "And as Triad, they could kick just about anybody's aft in a straight up fight."

Shimmer said, "My first choice would have been a bike, because I've always looked up to the Sisters and when I was a youngling I wanted to be just like them. But then I really listened to them when they told me what it was like for femmes before the war. The reasons they made the choices they did were valid then, but it wasn't for me. I'm a sniper. I need a heavier frame to support my guns. So I chose an alt that could do that. I'm not sorry because I did my share and I made it through. But my choices will always have to take that one into account."

Georgie nodded thoughtfully. "I'll think it through before I decide anything. We don't even know what we're going to be doing long term. We're costing the government a fortune. As soon as they decide the threat from the Decepticons is over, the axe is going to fall. What are we likely to be doing then?"

Prime said, "We will have to find, or create, a place of our own. We brought our war here, so it is only right that we deal with it. But after that, we will have to find a way to insure that we do not become commodities."

Will also had been listening without talking before, but now that he had something to contribute he suggested, "There's Mars. Get the UN behind you to build a base for scientific research. You know, after you get it built then the scientists can follow. But once you get up there, make sure it's also a way station to moving further out. Stake your claim on the asteroid belt. You can mine out there-and I bet you can do it economically. You can make energon from solar energy, so you won't have to depend on anyone for anything. That should keep everyone honest."

Ironhide said, "The real danger from the 'Cons is going to be the troublemakers that are still out there. If we could detect them we could stop them before they ever get to Earth, but that would mean putting listening posts out there."

Prime told him, "You may have just come up with the best argument to get the General Assembly to agree to this, Ironhide."

Georgie took their advice seriously. She downloaded information from their archives about the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different frames, and went on the internet to research different vehicles.

She asked Shimmer the next day when they were clearing away a palm tree that had fallen across the beach road, "Why don't we have fliers? The Decepticons have them."

Shimmer replied, "Oh, we do—or did. It's just fate that none of our Aerialbots are here with us. Is that what you want?"

"I'm thinking about it. It would sure be useful, and a lot of fun too."

"Yes, I thought about that too. The thing is, fliers need a lot of subsystems, and programming, that the rest of us don't have. That uses up resources, so it's limiting. There's always Prime's flight deck," she mused. "Of course, then there's always hauling a trailer around, so you have to choose a form capable of doing that."

"True, and also true."

"Still, if flying is what really calls to you, don't let me talk you out of it."

"I don't know. What I really love is being able to _move._ I hated being stuck in a wheelchair. No offense, Scramble."

The worker bot whined and leaned against her leg. She reached down to pat him. She had always been more of a cat person than a dog person, but Scramble was something special.

Shimmer nodded. She had chosen a very fast sports car as her first alt on Earth, a Dodge Viper SR-10 roadster. The convertible format was a convenient way for her to hide her cannons but still be able to deploy them without major reconfiguration. She said, "One of Chromia's secondary alts is a speedboat."

"We do live on an island. But there's no water on Mars."

"The air also is very thin there. The aircraft designed for Mars need much more lift. We will have to shield ourselves from radiation as well. Solar radiation can fritz our systems. Most of us are going to end up with new alts, or heavily modified ones, if we live there."

"I think something with four wheels is probably the most practical. No matter what planet we're on it's going to basically work."

Shimmer nodded. "Have you seen the McLaren MP4? Look it up and see what you think."

Georgie accessed the Internet and found Google. A moment later she was downloading images of the car. "You know—I really _like_ that. It has style."

Shimmer laughed. "I thought you would. It's a smaller frame than a lot of the cars in its class, and that's good because a bulky frame is just as limiting as one that's too small. Heavy armor is a good defense, of course, but I think it's better not to get hit in the first place. For that you have to be fast and graceful. Of course, if you ask the big mechs you'll hear a different side of that one. They'll say you can't always dodge, which is true enough."

Georgie said, "When I was human, and younger, I studied Shotokan karate for years. I'm a fourth kyu black belt—or was, I mean. I still have the instincts. I don't know how the katas would translate to this frame, but the basic concepts are still bound to be valid. Not getting hit in the first place is always better. Knowing how to get hit to minimize the damage is necessary too. Armor is useful, there's no denying that, but it can give you a false sense of security. Nobody _just_ relies on armor-that will get you killed."

Shimmer nodded. "You'll have to talk to Ironhide. There are Cybertronian martial arts. I don't think any of them are as regimented as the human ones, because they have to allow for the ability to transform. But he can teach you."

"I'll do that," she said. It would be really good to get back in practice again. She hadn't started katas because her protoform moved differently than a human body. She didn't want to make work for Ratchet by damaging herself. She needed a sensei to get her started safely before she experimented on her own. "I wonder where we could find one of these cars to scan."

Shimmer giggled. "I need to hack into the DMV. If there isn't one in Washington, there has to be one on the east coast somewhere."

"What form did the twins pick? Not that ice cream truck—"

"No, they're making their new forms tougher, but they haven't settled on a choice yet. After what happened to them, they want to be able to defend themselves better now. Dying settled them down a little, I guess."

"Dying is not a big deal. It's the process leading up to it, and those two poor kids—"

"Sentinel got off easy," Shimmer said. There was something cold and flat in her voice that reminded Georgie her friend's job on the battlefield was to find a good spot out of the melee and put a large round through somebody's head. Shimmer would have dearly loved to get a clear shot at Sentinel.

Georgie pointed out, "Well, _here_, he did. I never saw him where _I_ ended up."

Shimmer gave her a thoughtful look. "If there really is a Pit, I'm sure it has a special place for the likes of him."

(continued in Part 2)


	13. Nexus Part 2

(Nexus Part 2)

The trip to DC two weeks later turned out to be a girls' weekend in the big city. Flareup joined in, and Mikaela, Sara and Dr. Alicia Parker all went along to do some shopping. Georgie was a little worried how she was supposed to get _to _the McLaren MP4 to scan it in the first place without getting spotted, since all she had right now was a base protoform. "There's no way an eighteen-foot tall bot is walking down a street in Washington DC without starting a mob scene, even if we go at three in the morning!"

Flareup said, "That's where Sara comes in. She knows how to drive one of those large Army trucks. You can hide in the back until we get a chance for you to scan the car. You won't actually transform till we get back to HQ so we can help you if you have trouble figuring it out the first time. Most bots do. We also have to get your license plates before you can go out on the street."

Sara said, "We just have to be careful where we go. A deuce-and-a-half truck would make as much of a commotion as Georgie if we spent too much time cruising down residential streets."

"We're going to a dealer. It isn't too far from the main road. If we go at night we should be in and out before anyone has a chance to worry about an Army truck being there," Kaela assured her.

"It should work," Sara agreed. The three humans were riding with Shimmer. She headed up the ramp into the cargo plane. The cargo bay wasn't high enough for her to stand upright, but she could transform and find a place to get more comfortable. "Do you guys need your carry-ons?"

"Not now, if they're not bothering you in your subspace hold," Sara said.

"That's fine," Kaela said. "I won't want mine till I get hungry." She flipped down a seat and strapped in for takeoff. Sara looked around to make sure there was nothing lying loose that could fly around the cargo bay, then pulled on a headset and got into her seat. She helped Alicia find her seat belts. The doctor hadn't spent a lot of time on C-130's.

The three bots magna-locked to the deck rather than be strapped in.

Sara said into her mike, "Cargo bay to pilot, this is Sara Lennox, we're all secure back here."

"Roger that, cargo bay. Wheels up in five."

The plane's big engines rumbled to life. Georgie realized she wasn't just hearing it, she could also scan the plane's electrical system coming online. Subconscious routines running in the background used the feed from GPS satellites to tell her exactly where she was in all three dimensions, so she could also determine their altitude and constantly calculate their velocity. Those senses now felt as natural as sight and hearing.

Because she had all her memories from her previous life, Georgie still thought like a human. But from the moment she had decided to do this, she had made up her mind to embrace her new existence. It wasn't that hard. Having once experienced what it was like to be an unencumbered spirit—and got a good taste of what that really could be in her sparring match with Nova Prime—that would always be her true self. Knowing that, it wasn't important to her any more whether she was flesh or steel. This was where she was supposed to be on her journey now, so she was determined to enjoy it and make the most of it.

The plane powered through takeoff and leveled off. Once the pilot gave the all clear, they made themselves more comfortable and settled in for the long trip. Georgie released her lock to the deck and leaned back against a bulkhead. A C-130 was huge, but it had a low enough ceiling that they had to be careful not to hit anything. Flareup had brought some movies to watch, and when everybody else was interested as well, she put them up on a holoscreen. Sara knew where to look for the coffee. Soon they were all laughing and enjoying the trip.

After a couple of movies, they settled in to rest for a while. The bots magna-locked again to recharge. Shimmer warned Georgie that especially when there were humans in there, she could never take a chance on getting thrown around by an unexpected air pocket. If she was awake she could latch on before she could become a lethal projectile. But if she was in recharge, she wouldn't be able to wake up and react quickly enough. She couldn't afford to forget she weighed a over a ton and a half now. Flareup's 600 pounds gave her more leeway, but still nobody wanted her landing in their lap.

Bots and humans alike watched in awe when the C-130 refueled in midair. The pilots in both planes carried out the dangerous maneuver with all the calm professionalism of a day's work well done. They were well aware that they had a bunch of appreciative girls for an audience, too.

When they got to Andrews, the three femmes stayed on the plane with Dr. Parker while Sara and Kaela went to get the truck. That took a little while, and a call back to Diego Garcia to untangle some red tape. You didn't just drive off with an Army truck without the proper authorizations. When they brought it, Sara backed it up the C-130's ramp.

Parker climbed in the front while Kaela got in the back with Georgie. She made sure the tarps were fastened down securely, the last thing they wanted was to make a scene on the beltway at rush hour if the top flew off. Flareup led off and Shimmer brought up the rear. Kaela sat down at the tailgate with a rifle loaded with explosive rounds. If they got jumped on I-495, it wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

Georgie got used to transmitting her IFF signature every time they passed an energon detector. Miss one, and she'd have Jolt out there asking her in person who the Pit she was and what she was doing there.

They rolled into HQ after forty-five minutes of fighting traffic. Kaela and Parker secured their weapons while Shimmer helped Georgie out of the back of the truck.

"Didn't realize I'd stiffen up that much."

"Your lubricants settle when you don't move around for longer than a joor or so. It's normal. It's better to move around slowly at first to get them circulating again, but you can power through it if you have to. There's really not much we can do about it on a C-130. Close quarters aside, the pilots hate it if you move around too much and shift the load. After you get your alt, you'll be able to ease it a little by transforming. This is why if we have time and there's one going our way, we'd rather catch a ride on an aircraft carrier or a cargo ship."

Jolt came out. Georgie knew he hurt himself when she had been revived. She asked how he was doing.

"I'm fine now, how are you adjusting?"

"So far, so good," Georgie smiled at the blue mech. "Wouldn't have happened this way if it wasn't meant to be."

There was such serenity and certainty in that simple statement that he just nodded acceptance.

Kaela, Alicia and Sara piled into an unmarked hummer to go get some of their shopping done that afternoon. Flareup went out on a recon mission to make sure the car they were looking for was still in the showroom. She reported that it was and that Georgie should be able to scan it through the window.

She sent Georgie some quick images. The car in there was a deep orange with a carbon black interior. Georgie really liked the color. Flareup reminded her that Sideswipe was a talented painter who could do customization for her, once she got a better idea of what would look good in both forms. Since no one else had a McLaren alt they couldn't be sure how it would affect her bipedal form.

Her final appearance would depend a lot on the mods and weapons that Georgie eventually chose. She had a basic autocannon and a punch dagger, as well as sharp retractable claws, and she intended to train with several others before specializing further. She was really thinking about having Wheeljack make her a naginata but she wanted a lot more sparring experience before deciding.

For now, she was content to go out in the walled-in side lot and practice the basic kata that Ironhide had helped her modify.

She heard a couple of NEST agents. "What's she doing?"

"That's...definitely _heian shodan, _it's one of the first katas I learned. But she's no beginner-even though isn't she the brand new one?"

Georgie stopped and bowed. "We're working to adapt the Shotokan style," she said, that much was the truth. "It's the best fit with our own traditional weapon styles."

"I'd swear you're no beginner," he grinned.

Georgie hid panic behind a smile. "Thank you. I'm told that my namesake was a fourth-kyu black belt. Perhaps she was gracious enough to leave me some of her ability. And this _is_ a very basic kata!"

The soldier said critically, "You might have a balance problem when you move on to some of the kicks, if your center of gravity is where I think it is."

"What do you mean?"

He handed his rifle off to his buddy and demonstrated a high kick, lethal power combined with deceptively casual grace. He made a fist over his center of gravity, then did the kick again, more slowly. "I think your center is too high for that. If you did that same kick the way I just did, it would throw your balance off and leave an opening for your opponent to knock you over backwards."

She tried the same kick, intentionally not demonstrating the same level of skill. "You're right. I definitely need to work on shifting my mass lower. Where did you learn?"

"Parris Island, to begin with. After that I've studied all over, wherever I happened to be stationed."

"I'm only going to be here for a couple of days, but if we get the chance, would you mind if I ran a couple of other things past you?"

"Sure, I'll be around. I'm on duty until Tuesday. Name's Timmonds."

"Thanks."

Flareup got back, and detoured into the side lot when she saw Georgie out there. "What's up?"

"Sgt. Timmonds figured out a big problem for me, that's what. My center of gravity is too high, it's throwing my balance all off."

"All younglings have that problem, it's because you're still undifferentiated in a lot of ways you don't have your final mass yet. Wait until after you get your alt tonight. Before you transform back to bipedal mode the first time we need to really scan your alt and figure out where the mass shifts need to go when you take your final form. This is part of what Chromia meant. That McLaren really looks like a good all-around choice. It isn't _too_ big but it should be plenty to support a hand-to-hand frame like you want, as long as you realize you're not going to be the biggest, strongest bot out there. It's easier to upgrade strength than agility, though."

Georgie nodded. "So I guess I should just wait to worry about it. The balance problems might solve themselves."

"Right. We could work on some of those more basic moves if you want to spar a little."

"OK, but I'm not sure about contact sparring. Sheer mass is a problem. I'm not sure I have the skill yet to keep from hitting you too hard."

"Georgie, I went through a whole war fighting bots who were bigger than you and meant to hand me my aft. It's the teacher's responsibility not to get hurt, not the student's to protect her."

"Well, when you put it that way—!" The same was true in a human dojo.

At first glance, Flareup was less than a quarter of Georgie's size. The sisters were not minibots, but even in their combiner form, Triad was only about half Georgie's mass. Speed, skill and experience were on her side. Georgie was highly skilled, but she was still adapting to her new body. Flareup's monoped frame was incredibly agile. She evaded Georgie's attacks with serpentine ease.

Georgie went back to basics, mostly simple blocks and punches. Her strategy had to be to wear Flareup down. Ordinarily she would have depended on the ability not to get hit but in this case she was the larger, tougher, stronger opponent. She could afford a strategy of soaking up her opponent's blows and hitting when she could, knowing Flare would accumulate damage faster. Of course, in a real fight Flare would have backed off and used her cannon, but that wasn't what they were practicing.

They drew an audience, Shimmer and a few other off-duty soldiers. Shimmer watched a new bot doing much better against a veteran like Flareup than she would have expected. She had never paid much attention to martial arts beyond the basics. As a sniper she concentrated on her marksmanship. But now the need was going to be for more rounded operatives, with more options than just shooting someone. She decided it would be a good idea to look into learning some of those advanced techniques.

There were a couple others of the soldiers watching with the same critical eye as Timmonds. They were able to make a lot of useful comments, and occasionally a couple of them would demonstrate what they meant.

When it started to get dark, DC's infamous mosquitoes came out, sending the humans back indoors. It was nearly time for shift change anyway. Sara, Alicia and Mikaela got back as well.

They waited a few hours after dark to get Georgie's alt. She tried not to get as excited as a kid on Christmas morning, but that was hard with Shimmer and Jolt telling her their "first grownup alt" stories and practically bouncing. This was a major rite of passage, important enough that a lot of people had dropped everything to get her where she needed to be to get just the right one. This was becoming an adult in their society, a once in a lifetime event.

She climbed into the back of the truck and once again Kaela got back there with her.

Sara drove them to a very upscale business district. The car dealership had a fancy glassed in showroom that was by no means out of place with the jewelry store and classy boutique which flanked it. The McLaren was right through the glass.

::Shimmer, are you sure I can get a good scan through the window?::

::Yes, it's fine. Just take your time and get a good clear scan.::

Georgie reviewed the procedure one last time, then initiated the scan. Fifteen seconds later she told Kaela, "OK, I got it. Let's go before somebody calls a cop."

Kaela climbed past her so she could open the tarp on the driver's side, and told Sara to go.

When they got back, Sara grabbed her cell phone to take a movie of her first transformation. Georgie was careful not to get stuck or do anything else embarrassing that would get all over Diego Garcia for a couple sets of twins to devil her with.

That was when she really felt Cybertronian instead of human for the first time. Her sports car form was just as much "her" as her protoform had been, and her new bipedal form soon would be. She instinctively grounded and centered herself and felt her tires grip the pavement. In this form she was built to _race_.

Then Shimmer and Flareup scanned her so they could plan the all-important transformation to bipedal form. Her armor turned out the same deep orange as her alt.

Shimmer asked, "Is the balance problem still an issue?"

She moved to get some room, and threw a few experimental kicks. "It's fine. Now it's going to be a matter of working around the ways that our joints move differently. I don't think most karateka have to account for putting nearly two tons of metal in motion, or stopping."

Flareup suggested, "Shimmer, you try following that along with that sequence…kata?"

"OK but if I fall on my aft and I find this on You Tube—!" Shimmer threatened.

Flareup asked innocently, "Would I do that?"

"Yes!" Georgie and Shimmer chorused.

Shimmer asked, "Exactly what am I doing here?"

"Look up _heian shodan _on You Tube and check out the videos. It's the same sequence of moves every time. I've seen you spar, I know you can learn this."

"It's more of a dance, what does this have to do with actually fighting?"

"It's about learning the forms and getting the technique right."

Flareup said, "What I want to see is this. Georgie chose her frame and designed her transformation for this style of fighting. You designed around your guns. If you can learn this, then most bots of your basic design probably could. If we could learn it as Triad, that could be a big advantage for us. At least if the 'Cons don't learn it too."

"OK, I see where you're going with it. Most of them would never be disciplined enough for something like this." Shimmer followed Georgie through the steps, doing her best to copy the movements exactly.

Georgie said, "I think that actually wasn't bad for a first try."

Timmonds had been watching from the catwalk. "Not bad at all. You never did any kind of martial arts training?"

"Well, a lot like what you do in boot camp, I think. And a lot of sparring, like you've seen."

"Yeah, that shows. You've got good balance and you basically know how to block or throw a punch. Georgie, go through it again slowly, OK?"

As she went through the steps, Timmonds explained it to Shimmer and Flareup. By the time they decided to stop and recharge, Shimmer was determined to learn. Especially when Timmonds and one of his buddies, Hutchins, demonstrated more advanced techniques involving defending against an attacker with a weapon, taking it away and turning it on him. They cheerfully broke regs by taking the shortcut down from the catwalk—sliding down one of the supports like it was a fire pole. The femmes headed for their berths for the night. Flareup stayed awake for a while talking to Sideswipe.

The next day, after she got her license plates and learned to create a holoform, the three femmes cruised down to Virginia Beach and back while the women went shopping again. Then it was back to Andrews AFB to get on another C-130 and head home.

They rolled down the ramp. Georgie made sure she wasn't going to hit her head on the tail of the plane when she transformed. The Little Twins whistled at her. She laughed and flipped them off—a useful gesture that the bots had learned from NEST a long time before she had come along. She felt a comforting warmth settle around her as her family gathered around to get a look at her. She felt their approval. She finally understood the clan bond. She had made the right decision, and she silently thanked Nova Prime for coming up with the idea in the first place.

_A.N.: Chapter title from The Nexus by Dan Fogelberg. /A.N._


	14. Rescue

(Chapter 12—Rescue)

(2013—Diego Garcia, various locations in Georgia)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

A few weeks after Georgie got her alt form, Will Lennox was sitting under a palm tree on the beach keeping an eagle eye on his daughter while she dug in the sand at the water's edge. Of all the places to be stationed, he and Sara were agreed the island was one of the better ones.

His radio squawked for attention. "Colonel Lennox, sorry to disturb your down time, but we need you back at base, sir. Is Ironhide with you?"

"That's affirmative. We'll be there in ten. I need to drop my daughter off with Household-Six."

There was a chuckle at the other end. "Roger that, sir."

Lennox rolled to his feet. "OK, sweetie, time to gather up your toys. Daddy has to go to work."

*-T-F-Rising*

Lennox and Ironhide walked into Ops. "What have we got?"

Mearing pulled up a map of Georgia. "One of your guys' energon detectors went off twice, and now it has been picking up a faint, intermittent signal for the last twelve hours. It's on I-85 west of Greenville, just north of Hartville Lake. Looks like a county road crosses the interstate there."

Simmons brought up a local map. "There's an abandoned quarry three miles from that detector, just at the edge of its range. Decepticons going in and out of a building or an underground base there would explain an intermittent signal. Sgt. Bradley flew over in a private plane and saw evidence of tire tracks leading to this building." He put up a cell phone picture of a rusty corrugated tin building on the quarry site, the windows were broken out and at first glance it looked abandoned. But a computer enhancement of the photo showed that the door was in good repair, not chained shut.

Lennox said, "Somebody's using that building. If it isn't the 'Cons it could be drug smugglers or something else."

Prime said, "We need to find out which before we roll in there. If we get the wrong site we'll tip our hand."

Bumblebee said in his usual mix of sound clips, "That's my job, Prime."

Shimmer said, "If you're not sure you're ready, Bee, Georgie and I can scout it out. We're equipped with energon vapor suppression systems too."

"I can handle it," he said confidently. "It's been a long time. I'm ready to go back to work."

Prime gave Bumblebee a long measuring look. Post-traumatic stress was as serious an issue for Cybertronians as for humans, but Bumblebee had worked hard to overcome it. The Autobot leader looked over at Ratchet, who nodded. Prime said, "All right, Bee. You're on. Shimmer, you and Georgie are up next when we detect another location." It was technically Georgie's first mission, but the hostage situation in the New York subway gave the lie to that. Regardless, he was keeping Shimmer and Georgie together for now.

Mearing said, "NAS Atlanta has been mothballed since 2009. We can set up a staging area there in one of the hangars, keep the rest of you under roof there to avoid an energon signature in case they've put out their own detector web."

Will asked, "Seymour, can you eliminate all the areas that we have covered by detectors?"

Simmons typed in information and a large area of the map grayed out.

"Now show me where Chromia was being held, and highlight the most direct route between there and the quarry, that isn't covered by our detectors."

Simmons did so. The route snaked along back roads on the south side of the lake.

Lennox said, "Now highlight all possible locations within five miles of that route. What are our criteria, large unused structures and possible underground sites?"

Simmons nodded. Mearing made a pleased noise when only three more sites showed up—an out of business chicken farm, a shutdown furniture factory, and a former chemical plant.

Lennox asked, "Do we have secure communications with Bradley?"

"No, Colonel, he emailed the photo to Sgt. Fraley's private account with a lot of unrelated vacation-type pictures but we don't have communications. If the 'Cons have tapped into Echelon, they could be looking for any number of keywords," Simmons replied. "I would advise against an attempt to communicate the route."

"Do we have boots on the ground at NAS Atlanta yet?"

Mearing said, "Advance team's ETA from the DC base is two hours."

"Put Diego Garcia on alert, I want wheels up in an hour," Lennox ordered. "Prime, are the twins still in DC?"

Mearing loved to watch the two field commanders bat an idea back and forth. The synergy was incredible-their true secret weapon. On the battlefield it was amazing how two commanders from such radically different backgrounds could anticipate each other and use their disparate squads to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses so well.

Prime replied, "Yes, they are, and Jolt is there too."

"Then what if we throw a smokescreen. Scramble the DC base to full alert and have them start running patrols, let the bad guys think we suspect something's happening there."

Prime said, "We can send some false radio traffic indicating that we are en route there, as well, to explain the heightened alert status here. Bee, once you determine what's going on at the quarry, then scout the chicken farm. Shimmer, you and Georgie will have the factory and the chemical plant."

"Yes, Prime," Shimmer said. "Let me download the visuals and I'll brief Georgie on the mission."

Ironhide said, "What do you think, Boss, air drop on both detention locations, grab our guys, then converge on the base?"

Prime agreed. "We don't have enough mechs to hit all three at once."

Shimmer said, "I wouldn't want to go into a Decepticon base with just the three of us, not knowing exactly who's in there, but Bee, Georgie and I could ambush the first ones who try to run for it. That might keep a few more of them holed up until the rest of you can get there. We'll certainly be able to get some good intel on whoever does escape."

Lennox said, "Optimus, I could send a sniper team in with each of them. A Barrett Light Fifty loaded with NEST-standard explosive rounds could ruin a lot of the 'Cons' whole day. We'll want to send in the majority of NEST forces with the extraction teams, though."

Prime nodded agreement with his human counterpart. "Ratchet, we don't know what shape the prisoners will be in when we get them out, so you set up a field medical unit in the hangar at NAS Atlanta. I'll command Red Team, Hide, you take Blue Team. The Wreckers will stay here as a rear guard."

They two mechs snapped out, "Yes, Prime," and the whole base exploded into activity.

Sam kissed Carly goodbye. She said, "I'll stay with Sara until you get home. Bring them home."

She swallowed her jealousy of Mikaela, who was going with Ratchet's team. Sam and Mikaela never saw each other outside their duties, which rarely overlapped since she worked with Ratchet and Wheeljack, and he was either in Admin or training with the NEST team. Kaela was dating one of the NEST team. It was over between them, she knew that.

Her fear for Sam was harder to control, after losing her brother. She had realized amid the rubble and fire in Chicago that if she wanted a life with this man, that was what she had to do. This was who he was, and he wasn't going to change for her or anybody. She didn't ask if he would be staying in the hangar with field ops, or accompanying Bumblebee or Lennox' team, she would worry herself sick either way if she had too much information. It was bad enough to sit home feeling useless while he went into harm's way. Her job was the baby. Whoever called it the home front got that right.

*-T-F-Rising*

The Sisters checked their weapons loads. Arcee asked, "Chromia, are you sure about this?"

"Of course I am. I don't remember anything that happened while I was kidnapped, so it isn't like I might glitch on you in the middle of a fight."

Flareup smacked Arcee on the back of the helm. "She's never letting Ironhide out of her sight again, dumb aft!"

Arcee rubbed the back of her head and said sheepishly, "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

Chromia said, "Don't worry about it, Arcee. I know it doesn't make sense."

"I don't think it has to make sense. It's how you feel."

Flareup subspaced her gun. "Let's go get our mechs back and kick some 'Con aft!"

*-T-F-Rising*

Will watched the final preparations from the catwalk. The NEST troops were checking their equipment, something they did obsessively. A soldier could take down a human enemy barehanded if it came to that, but against Decepticons their weapons were their only hope of victory. Everything had to be the best and everything had to be in top condition.

Mikaela was supervising loading the medical equipment on the transport. Over the two years after she and Sam had broken up, she had taken advantage of the opportunities that had opened up for the poor daughter of an ex-convict and completed her pre-engineering degree, as well as got her paramedic certification. That went both ways with both sides of the med team, the NEST CMO had asked Ratchet to train them. Now every one of them had qualified as at least the Cybertronian equivalent of an EMT 1, just as Ratchet and Wheeljack had for humans.

Simmons ignored the heavy metal brace that went from his waist to his ankle as he and Dutch carefully double-checked packing every piece of comms and telemetry equipment they were taking with them. His shattered leg would never heal right, but he was walking, and that was all that mattered now. There were not going to be any telemetry problems on this op if he had anything to say about it. They would be downloading realtime information from every soldier on the battlefield, bots and humans alike, so Mearing could coordinate everything. They intended to measure time on target to the split second and hit both detention sites as close to simultaneously as possible. Ideally the Decepticons at the main base would be the only ones who would have the opportunity to react when Prime and Ironhide busted the doors down.

Will had thought about dropping a few bunker busters on the main base once they located it, but discarded that idea because they didn't know if there were innocents in there. Human prisoners, or Autobots who had landed on Earth in response to Prime's call and been captured before they had the chance to report in.

*-T-F-Rising*

The hangar at NAS Atlanta was pitch dark when the first huge transport rolled in, guided only by ground crew with glow sticks. The hangar doors rattled down as the ramp lowered. Only then did a minimal amount of lighting come up, so they could unload the transport. After that, the bots who had come in on that C-130 shut down almost into stasis lock to let their energon signature dissipate before the doors opened to bring in the next plane. That turned out to be the one that had been modified to airlift Prime. A standard cargo plane wasn't big enough.

The medical team staked out the far end of the hangar and started setting up. Likewise, Mearing directed her team as they started setting up an Ops area. Bee, Shimmer and Georgie each picked up a two-man sniper team and left on their scouting missions.

The rest of them could only hurry up and wait.

*-T-F-Rising*

Georgie checked that her energon vapor suppressors were working for the twentieth time as she rolled through the hot Georgia night, following Shimmer's taillights. She watched her speed. Fifty-five had never felt so slow and all they needed was to get pulled over by the state patrol. The two NEST snipers, Lt. Kenoi and Sgt. Langston, weren't the chatty type and she was thankful for that. She was too nervous to carry on a conversation.

It hit her like a plunge into ice water that _this was it. _The whole operation, the rescue of the missing bots, the safety of her friends and family who were putting their lives on the line, all depended on her doing her job right. She drew on the inner calm she had learned in her martial arts studies to stay focused.

The factory was their first stop, but it was surrounded by a chain link fence and there wasn't a whiff of energon. The padlock on the gate was rusted shut.

The two bots let their human passengers out and transformed, then Shimmer jumped the fence with a lot less noise than anyone would have expected. They lifted the humans over and Georgie followed last.

The old factory building was empty. Kenoi reported, "Alpha Leader. Clear. Proceeding to next location."

"Alpha Leader, acknowledged," Mearing replied.

*-T-F-Rising*

Back in Ops, Lennox and Prime watched Simmons gray out the old factory. Dots moving along the back road were Georgie and Shimmer on the move again. Somewhere in the background, Skids and Mudflap squabbled over something and Sides told them to shut it. Nobody paid any attention, it was just the three of them letting off pre-mission tension. Sideswipe was hyper-focused, not allowing emotion to interfere with getting his twin back.

Ironhide and the Sisters were studying visuals of the remaining three sites, fine-tuning their plans for their assault. Occasionally Will clicked his headset to Hide's frequency to put in something concerning his men's actions. They would have it down to a science by the time they got the go. Optimus was doing something similar, but Red Team's tactics depended more on the rapid application of brute force than the Sisters' finesse and Hide's lethal accuracy with his cannons.

Mearing reported that the two cargo choppers that they had requested from Fort Benning were standing by. If Sunstreaker and First Aid were unable to return to NAS Atlanta under their own power, the choppers would medevac them.

*-T-F-Rising*

Bumblebee carefully approached the quarry, using some boulders twice his height as cover. There was a definite but weak energon signature. He approached the road down into the quarry, and noted the presence of an energon detector that wasn't one of theirs. He gave it as wide a berth as he could. Once he got into position he could see First Aid lying on the concrete floor, clearly visible through the broken windows.

Movement turned out to be some 'Con he didn't know, carrying a 55 gallon drum. He knelt by the stasis-locked medical mech for a few minutes, doing Bee couldn't see what, then picked up the drum and came outside. He looked around furtively, then transformed into an old Ford flatbed with more primer than paint, and the drum strapped on his bed.

Bee stepped deeper into the shadows and the Ford rolled past him, near enough for him to reach out and touch.

Once he was gone, one of Bee's partners, Jake Christianson, climbed atop the boulder and lay flat, studying the building through night vision binoculars. He made hand signs for three more tangos. Bee reported their intel back to base. When Mearing repeated to the warriors in the hangar that he had found First Aid, he heard a chorus of shouts and oorahs.

They backed off carefully, they still had a chicken farm to check out.

*-T-F-Rising*

The chemical plant was a maze of weirdly shaped buildings and tanks connected by pipes. There was a fence around it, but it had several holes in it. The parking lot and gravel road that they could see were full of weeds and even small saplings. A warning sign hung by one corner, informing trespassers that the place was a Superfund site, off limits due to chemical contamination.

On closer look, Georgie saw gaps where structural steel was missing. She scowled. ::If Sunstreaker's in there he could be anywhere!::

Shimmer agreed. There were plenty of places in there that were big enough to hide a stasis-locked mech.

Kenoi signed for the two of them to hold position, while he and his three teammates disappeared into the weeds. After a tense ten minutes, they returned to report having seen four sentries and a lot of tracks from several different vehicles. This was the base. They took a position in some piney woods down the only access road to wait for Beta Team.

*-T-F-Rising*

Their third transport touched down outside the hangar. The NEST team split into two groups. Lennox would be taking half of them with Blue Team. The rest, commanded by the cool, professional SAS Major Alistair Graham, Lennox' 2iC since Epps' retirement, assembled with Red Team.

With Bee's report that Sunny was in a large barn with at least two Decepticon guards, they decided that Red Team would take the relatively open farm while the smaller and more agile Blue Team would make the more precise drop into the quarry. They loaded onto the transports and took off.

*-T-F-Rising*

Mearing watched their approaches on the two LZs as Bumblebee joined the other scouts near the Decepticon base. She ordered the planes carrying Red Team to reduce speed slightly to coordinate time on target. All three cargo ramps opened within a second of each other. The Nest teams jumped first, and as soon as they were clear, the bots dropped.

The next thirty seconds were a maelstrom of images from two battlefields.

Optimus Prime rolled out of a hard landing and crashed through the barn door, transforming and activating his ion blaster as he took a position between Sunstreaker and two of the Decepticons. Sideswipe was right behind him and on the third one.

Ironhide blasted the garage door in the quarry and the Sisters and Lennox's NEST troops charged in, yelling their battle cries as they opened up on all three targets.

Mearing caught a glimpse through a soldier's helmet cam of a large shape dropping from the rafters. "Prime, overhead! Look out!"

His blaster took out a large silver spider-like bot with sharp blades on all its many legs before it could drop on him, and with it a big patch of the metal roof.

Sideswipe threw the dead body of his target off his blades up against the wall, and pivoted sharply to hover protectively over his brother, terrifying in his intensity.

Will shot a minicon of some kind, and watched Ironhide punt another one out the door into the quarry lake. The Sisters accounted for the last of the large Decepticons.

NEST took care of attaching cables to the unconscious mechs so that they could be evacuated. Now that stealth was no longer an issue, the bots transformed and made for the chemical plant as fast as their wheels could carry them. Prime, Ironhide and Sideswipe rapidly outdistanced the others, roaring through the night at over three hundred miles an hour, depending on a network of police and military choppers to keep them apprised of road conditions. Every time they passed a side road, it was blocked by a sheriff's deputy, a police officer or a state patrol officer. Mearing had carefully coordinated that by telephone only, usually to personal phones rather than to any registered to law enforcement agencies, to have the best chance of maintaining security. Apparently every single police department involved had maintained radio silence as well, because no one had tipped off the 'Cons that anything was happening.

Every time they passed an officer, they got a salute or a tap of the horn or siren.

*-T-F-Rising*

At the chemical plant, seconds after the coordinated rescue operations, the 'Con hideout resembled a kicked-over hornet's nest. Some seeker tried to fly for it, only for Shimmer to shoot him down. There was a lot of yelling and cursing from inside, but nobot else tried to escape by air.

Some bots came out the front gate, but one of the snipers suddenly called, "Hang fire, they got a buncha kids with 'em!"

They watched with growing horror as the 'Cons shoved a small group of frightened sparklings out into the middle of the overgrown parking lot. One of them stood in front of the others, courage his only weapon.

Shimmer said, "They're going to kill those sparklings, we can't let them!"

The lead sniper and commanding officer of the team, Lt. Kenoi, leveled his rifle. "We'll take out the ones closest to the kids. The rest of them are all yours. We'll take any clear shots we get during the fight."

Bee's radio replied, "Roger that."

Georgie felt a surge of energy that felt like an adrenaline rush, and centered herself. Three sniper rifles barked and three mechs fell as Shimmer, Bumblebee and Georgie charged through holes in the fence into the rest of them.

A blade came at Georgie, she blocked instinctively and her punch dagger took the 'Con right between the ruby optics. She shoved his corpse off her in a spray of energon. She reacted a little too slow to an attack from behind and got her bell rung. She staggered, but caught her enemy's next blow and threw him over her shoulder. One of the snipers in the woods made sure he stayed down.

It started to dawn on the 'Cons that it wasn't just three crazy Autobots they had to worry about—invisible death was coming down on them out of the trees as well. That momentary confusion determined the outcome of the fight. A couple of them fled back into the plant. One made a suicide run on the terrified, screaming sparklings, but Bee got between him and his target and shot him. Shimmer and Georgie took out the ones the snipers didn't.

Kenoi snapped, "Get the kids and get the hell out of there before they regroup!"

Shimmer transformed and swung her doors open. Some of the older sparklings had the sense to pile in, dragging some of the smaller ones. Others had frozen in terror and confusion Bee and Georgie picked them up and loaded them in. Georgie yelled at Shimmer, "Go, go, go!"

Bee was on the line with Mearing. He shot Georgie an information packet, they had to cover Shimmer's retreat for at least the two minutes it would take for Prime to get there.

They took cover and switched to guns to try to discourage anyone from rushing them. But now they were outnumbered and up against heavy hitters, coming at them from multiple directions out of the hulking shapes of the chemical plant. Their cover didn't last long.

That was the longest two minutes of Georgie's life—_either_ life. Ironhide's lessons saved her more times than she could count. So did the snipers, once they blew a 'Con's head off a split second before he could blast her into a million pieces. There was no time to react to the fear because a threat came from the other side. Claws sank into her shoulder, and pain exploded as he ripped through steel and more sensitive structures beneath. She slashed wildly and kicked out, getting some room to move. She punched hard enough to tear something in her wrist, and more by sheer luck than anything else took the much larger mech in the spark. His corpse shielded her from a close blast.

"Bee, there are too many of them! They're going to get by us!"

"We…hold this…line!" He underscored the determination behind that statement by gunning down a 'Con who came at him with a huge cleaver-like blade.

That was when Prime, Ironhide and Sideswipe charged into the melee and tore the lid off the pit. The 'Cons got in each other's way trying to escape the three angels of death, and some of them on the edges of the brawl actually made it. Two of them dropped to their knees with their servos on their heads, begging for their lives. The rest went down fast, no match for any one of the Autobots' big guns, let alone all three at once.

Wheeljack ordered the two prisoners to turn out their subspace caches and snapped energon-dampening shackles on them. Once they were sure the two prisoners were not going to cause any more trouble, they invaded the base.

Whatever they were expecting, the filthy hole they found in the biggest building wasn't it. There were no more Decepticons in there. Along one wall was a row of 55-gallon drums. "What in the Pit? Is that slag supposed to be energon?" Sides asked.

Ironhide said, "Yeah, sort of-that's why they kept Chromia and the others alive in stasis lock, but exposed to sunlight. If you absorb more energy from the sun, or the grid or whatever, than you're using, you'll store the rest as low grade energon." He was surprised Sides didn't know that, but an active bot was never going to run into a situation of making more energon from sunlight than they used just for day to day activities. You basically had to be in stasis lock for that to happen.

Kenoi snorted. "Those two who surrendered are gonna wish they'd fought to the death when Chromia finds out they were using her for a milk cow."

Wheeljack said, "I agree, but I thank Primus that our bots were more valuable to them alive than dead. What a level of desperation it must have taken for these Decepticons to do such a thing, and still they must have been all but starving. Hiding in here in the dark, they weren't making very much of their own."

Georgie ducked through a doorway that was six feet too short for her, and then let out an undignified screech when she saw what was in there. The gutted remains of several Cybertronians were scattered around concrete slabs. Ironhide was right behind her, guns out. "Fraggin' Pit!" he swore. "I can't even tell for sure how many of them this used to be! What were they doin' here?"

Wheeljack said, "They killed their own for spare parts."

Georgie shuddered, "Oh, I _hope _the poor bastards were dead first."

Ironhide told her, "You don't need to see any more of this. Que, get her out of here."

"I'm OK."

"Trust me, go," Ironhide told her. She didn't argue any more, if only because it got Wheeljack out of there too, and this wasn't something the kindsparked scientist needed to dwell on either.

Prime asked his longtime bodyguard, "What did you find?"

"They were fraggin' cannibals. Remember that slag hole we found on that mining asteroid?"

Prime nodded. Desperation could drive even civilized mechs to unspeakable acts, but he believed nothing was beneath these monsters. "I hope this is the last of them."

There was no indication in the hideout that this lot had been in contact with other fugitives.

They had rescued seven severely traumatized sparklings, and a thorough search of the chemical plant turned up no indications of any others.

When they regrouped, Shimmer was mobbed by crying sparklings. His armor still hot and stinking from the battle, but with gentle servos, Ironhide picked the biggest one up. Under all the filth was a little femme. "Easy, Little Bit, you're safe now. Nobody's gonna hurt you. I'm Ironhide. What's your designation?"

"Nightstar," she whispered, latching onto him for dear life.

Georgie took a little mech whose tiny leg was hanging on by a few wires. She hoped she had killed the glitch who did that to a little one, but bit her glossa before she said any such thing where the sparkling could hear her. He'd seen enough of crazy violent bots, he didn't need another one. "Wheeljack, I need a little bit of help over here."

At first he saw her torn up shoulder and thought she meant that, but then she indicated the sparkling's injury.

"Oh, _my_. Sparkling, I'm Wheeljack but my friends call me Que. Let's see what we can do to make your leg feel a little better until we can repair you properly." He quickly commed Ratchet with scans of the little mechling to confirm the best procedure to get him stabilized for transport. Que had been well aware that his old friend had a talent for turning the air blue. Nothing compared to the healer's reaction to somebody mistreating sparklings, though.

*-T-F-Rising*

Once they got back to Atlanta, the medical unit went to work, but the only serious cases were the sparklings, the one they already knew about who had the leg injury needed surgery. So did the one who had tried to shield the others with his own body. He had an untreated head injury. Ratchet was able to help him but he was always going to seem a little "slow" to other bots because he would always need to default to a second processor for anything complicated.

NEST rallied around the little guy, Lennox explained that all of them had either served with soldiers who had taken head injuries in the line of duty or knew people who had. Seeing a kid, any kid, going through the same thing hit them where they lived.

First Aid and Sunstreaker were weakened, in need of general maintenance, fuel and recharge, but they were both walking around on their own. Georgie had one of the most dangerous injuries among all their fighters, and it turned out to be not her shoulder but the hit that she'd taken to the head. After seeing what happened to the little mech, it scared her teammates.

Ratchet ran a scan to make sure she hadn't loosened a circuit board. He explained, "As a human, you had to worry about a brain injury if you got your head hit like that. With us, it's actually something similar. We have cushioning to protect our processors that works on the same shock-absorbing principle as their cerebrospinal fluid. But if you saw stars or had any other kind of sensory episode, that's an indication that the cushioning failed to a certain extent and loosened connections. You were lucky, it was minor. Your self-repair systems kicked in immediately and took care of it. It's a good rule of thumb for everyone, though, if you get hit on the head always take it seriously."

She nodded. "I have a lot to learn."

"Let's take a look at this shoulder now." Out of respect for a femme, he pulled the curtain before removing her pauldron. "Who did this?"

"I don't know, some big green mech with a big dent in the side of his head and a missing ear fin. He had claws. Actually I think I damaged my other wrist when I killed him." She had honestly forgotten about the injury, which felt pretty much like a sprained wrist, until just then.

"That sounds like it might have been Earthmover. He wasn't missing an ear fin the last time I saw him, but the dent sounds familiar. If it was him, you're a better fighter than I gave you credit for. That mech was a menace."

"I was lucky. I just kicked out to get him off me before he tore me to pieces, but he lost his balance just long enough for me to get in one good shot with my punch dagger. Ratchet, I never killed anyone hand to hand before, and today-I don't exactly know how many-at least one other and I know there had to be more." Reaction was starting to set in. She was glad bots didn't throw up because she was pretty sure if they did, she'd be worshiping the porcelain goddess about now.

"There was nothing else you could do. They had to be stopped before they killed the sparklings," Ratchet told her firmly. It wasn't the first time he'd patched up some green newbie, as torn up by what they'd had to do in battle as by the injuries they had taken.

"_Why_ would anyone kill their own kids?"

"They didn't bond with sparklings the way we do. They just raised them in a pack, like stray animals that they let hang around on the edge of their society. They didn't form families. The ones who survived to adulthood didn't get the right to clan-bond with Megatron until they proved themselves worthy to be Decepticons with their first kill. They must have decided it was better to murder them than let us have them."

"That's _atrocious_. No wonder the Decepticons were crazy if they were raised like that."

Ratchet nodded. "I'm surprised they hadn't already killed the little mech with the dislocated hip joint. They aren't known for tolerating weakness."

"Why are the sparklings' optics white?"

"Because they've never been bonded. You have blue optics because you were bonded with us in the procreation ritual. They were sparked from the All-Spark at the dam."

"Wait, wait, _wait_, you mean _Simmons-"_

Ratchet nodded. "He didn't know what was happening, that they were anything other than highly advanced machines. Once he found out who and what we really are, he's done everything he could to make it right, up to almost getting killed with a rifle in his hands fighting for us more than once. But his former outfit, Sector 7, was responsible for Megatron getting loose in the first place, as well as the deaths of all those sparklings they were experimenting on, and he's going to carry all of that for the rest of his life. We can all forgive him, but that doesn't mean he's forgiven himself." He finished with her shoulder and checked her wrist. "Loose cables. They'll self-repair over your next couple of recharge cycles. I don't want you sparring for a few days, but you probably won't have to do anything else with it. Let me see you ready your punch dagger."

She stepped back to get more room and did so. It came out of subspace smoothly, though the play in her wrist was obviously a hindrance. Ratchet managed not to react to the telltale scarring and electrical pitting on the weapon itself, but that had clearly been caused by her enemy's spark arcing out on the blade. She was alive because she hadn't hesitated to kill.

She subspaced the dagger. He patted her arm. "Send in the next one, get some energon and recharge while you can."

"Thank you, Ratchet."

"Georgie?"

"Yeah?"

"You did good today. You saved those sparklings. At the end of the day, that's what counts."

"Is it OK if I look in on them?"

"Ask Que, but I don't see why not."

*-T-F-Rising*

Back on Diego Garcia, it soon became obvious that Ironhide and Chromia now had a daughter, and Nightstar was a daddy's girl for sure. She and Annabelle Lennox were instant best friends forever, and just as Ironhide and Chromia were Annabelle's adopted uncle and aunt, Will and Sara became Nightstar's.

Firecracker, the young mech with the bad leg, also went to Ironhide and Chromia, because Firecracker shared Ironhide's penchant for making things go boom and everybody wanted him taught ASAP when _that_ was appropriate. Sadly, because the Decepticons had left his injured leg untreated for so long, he would never have the full use of it short of a full reformat. Ratchet had reattached it, but it never reintegrated properly.

Earthshaker was small now, but he was going to grow into a big mech. He was challenged due to his injury, but gentle, though he had learned to keep his true feelings to himself and act tough to survive. They noticed a pattern, though, whenever he thought one of the adults was mad at one of the smaller sparklings he would act out to draw attention to himself. He ended up spending all the time he could with Prime, but Wheeljack adopted him because Prime didn't feel his duties left him enough time to be a proper parent to a troubled little mech. Que's gentle patience was exactly what Shaker needed.

Skyrocket and Dragonfly were brother and sister, both born to be fliers one day. Because they were small, their survival strategy had been to avoid notice, but it didn't take long for them to feel safe enough to show a mischievous streak. They ended up with Bumblebee and Shimmer.

Gadget and Gizmo were the smallest, sparked from smart phones. The Decepticons had only kept them around only because they were occasionally useful and required few resources. They had survived the hardships of life on the run because Earthshaker looked out for them. They were actually in the best shape of all the sparklings. Because they had needed so little energon, they had been the only ones to get enough. It was love at first sight between them and Flareup.


	15. Moving Forward Part 1

(Chapter 13—Moving Forward Part 1)

(2013—Diego Garcia)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

Georgie's typical day took on a routine. Once her injuries repaired themselves, she spent the morning training. Ironhide didn't want to interfere too much with her martial arts style, he simply worked with her to adapt what she already knew to her new capabilities. She had to learn to come up fighting from her alt form. A Decepticon wasn't going to wait for her to stabilize in her bipedal form before attacking. In return, she gladly taught the Shotokan style to anyone who wanted to learn. Bumblebee and Shimmer found it a good match, since they already depended far more on skill and speed than brute strength, and they hadn't had the opportunity to learn one of the traditional Cybertronian styles. They soon discovered this wasn't something they were going to master overnight. A true study of the martial arts was a way of life.

She spent a couple of hours a day working with Ratchet and Mikaela, learning as she helped out around the medbay. Ratchet understood that she was at a loss when it came to the Cybertronian culture. She would download whatever history and literature files he gave her, then they would discuss it. All of them enjoyed the lessons very much. Mikaela had never been the literary type, but the insight into a completely different culture was fascinating enough to get her to curl up with a data pad that didn't have a blueprint on it. Georgie pointed out the myriad similarities between their cultures, and often suggested human literature that compared or contrasted.

Then in the evenings sometimes she would mind the sparklings, sometimes one or two and sometimes all seven, and sometimes she went to the common room to hang out with the adults. At least one or two nights a week, there would be a movie or a concert video on the beach for everyone, mechs and humans alike.

She was curious about the sparklings, how they were created as infants and grew to adulthood while she (thank God, Primus and all Their angels) had been spared going through that again.

Ratchet reminded her, "We aren't organics. We don't have a specific growth sequence hardwired into DNA. Remember it is the spark that differentiates a mech or a femme from a machine. A juvenile period gives us a chance to experience life and mature emotionally before taking on adult responsibilities and relationships. Because they are immature and constantly changing, sparklings can try various simplified alts until they find one that suits them. It gives them a chance to learn who they are. We didn't have the ability to produce a juvenile frame, or that is what you would have gotten. Had Primus granted us a new spark instead of returning you to us, your namesake would have indeed been a sparkling, albeit in an adult frame."

"There isn't _any_ physiological difference between mechs and femmes whatsoever, is there?" She had been curious about that, but apparently the answer was so obvious to bots who had been raised as bots that there was no straightforward information in the archives.

"No. We have a psychological gender, but that's very different from having a biological sex. Taking on certain cosmetic gender characteristics by minor transformation is a function of our core programming, and a holdover from the slave days. Anyone who tries to create some sort of qualitative difference between the genders based on appearance is full of superstitious nonsense. Differences between Cybertronians are strictly individual, based on whatever modifications we've made and the alt forms we've chosen."

Georgie thought about it. "So there couldn't be a transsexual Cybertronian? Physical form is always going to match self-image, right?"

Ratchet nodded. "It must be terrible for transsexual humans to feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex, but that isn't a problem for us. It isn't unheard of for one of us to change genders, but it isn't as much of an issue for us. The form will change to match. The bot usually chooses a new designation, but then again we commonly take new names to commemorate various rites of passage. Nearly everyone takes a new designation or a different form of their sparkling designation upon coming of age, for example."

"Am I supposed to choose a new designation instead of my human name?"

"Not necessarily, it isn't ever something you're required to do. As long as you feel that your designation is right for who you are, frame, programming and spark, then it's right. Only you know when your designation doesn't fit you anymore."

Georgie resisted the impulse to bow and say "Hai Sensei." Ratchet would have taken it as a wisecrack, but the old mech reminded her very much of her first karate master. "So, brothers and sisters? How do the sparklings know which ones are brothers and sisters and which aren't? They were all sparked together and raised together."

"It's a form of spark bond. Just like all the other forms, it happens when it happens. The two fliers are obvious, seekers instinctively form a trine bond if they can but they'll settle for two if they have to. Firecracker and Nightstar may form a sibling bond as well. That isn't the same as a twin bond like Sunny and Sides, twins start out as one spark."

"I don't understand all of that."

"You will when you're drawn to someone," Ratchet told her. "Any sort of bond is serious, never to be entered lightly. Since twins do start out as one spark, they don't ever know any other way. Parents and sparklings, and siblings who bond as sparklings, typically have a very close bond but not an unbreakable one. There are similar bonds between lovers, friends, members of a cohort, that kind of thing. But to affirm a sibling bond as an adult, or to take a sparkmate, that's for life. Lovers can be together for centuries before a sparkbond forms, if it ever does. Or in some cases they can get overloaded on cheap energon and wake up bonded the next morning."

"Ironhide and Chromia?"

Ratchet laughed. "Exactly."

"Let me guess, she was an uptown girl with a taste for bad boys, and he was a royal pain in her aft right up until they got together."

"That story plays out here, too?"

Georgie laughed. "All the time, my friend."

"As different as we are, we're all the same," Ratchet philosophized as he took advantage of the quiet afternoon to stock supply shelves. Georgie helped by bringing in crates from a large pallet out in the common area, a large bay that had once been a hangar from which the smaller surrounding areas such as the medbay had been partitioned off.

Georgie asked, "If losing a sparkmate is usually always fatal, why do it?"

"Some things are worth dying for," Ratchet said. "I never met the right femme, but I wish I had."

Mikaela drove up on a four-wheeler pulling a trailer with more crates. "These came in on the last transport."

She pitched in breaking open crates to inventory the new supplies.

Ratchet said, "I think we are as well supplied as we have ever been, here on Earth. But we've used up all the structural metal we were able to salvage from the _Xanthium_. There's going to be a real problem the next time somebody busts a strut or something, and I don't know what we'll do when the sparklings are ready for a growth cycle."

"Why?" Georgie asked. "I mean, Earth isn't exactly short on metal."

Mikaela explained, "Earth alloys aren't strong enough, especially for the big mechs like Prime and Ironhide, but really not for any of you under the kind of stress loads you have to tolerate in combat. Our technology is just too primitive to do what you need."

Georgie said, "The pillars? Is there anything we need there?"

Ratchet said, "Maybe, but not for anything major. They looked like mostly electronics to me, not anything with a particularly strong structure to them."

Mikaela said, "The _Ark_. If we could salvage it-"

"In case you haven't noticed, it's on the fraggin' _moon_," Ratchet told her.

Mikaela grinned, "We'll just have to build ourselves a space ship."

"You and Que figure out a way we can build something spaceworthy. Don't bother Prime with a crazy idea like that unless you can make it work with what we can actually get our servos on right here," Ratchet said.

Mikaela said confidently, "We can do it if we can get funding. Most of NASA's expense was R&D. You already know how to build spaceships."

Georgie said, "Hire the Russians to transport you. They're supplying the space station, aren't they?"

Mikaela said, "They could get us up there, sure, but they aren't salvaging a wreck and hauling tons of scrap back here. No, we need a workhorse. Let Que and me chew on it for a while."

That evening Ratchet told all the adult Autobots the supply situation. It wasn't unexpected news, they had all known the day would come. There was an argument whether or not to bring it to the humans' attention. Prime decided to keep it need to know for the time being. It would only worry their friends and give their enemies leverage over them. There was also no need to upset the sparklings. If their growing frames had to be augmented with Terran materials, they would never have known any different. It was the adults who would have to adjust.

*-T-F-Rising*

Mikaela sat cross-legged on a corner of Wheeljack's desk with her laptop balanced on her knees. She asked, "So are we designing this for you guys, or for us too?"

"It would be simpler and cheaper to design for Cybertronians. We can manage quite well without recycling oxygen, and need not be as concerned about acceleration."

"True. But I'm thinking there's money to be made once we prove we can actually put this thing out to the black. Servicing the space station, repairing satellites, hell, building a moon base and ferrying scientists back and forth-whatever the government or some college or company is willing to pay for. I don't think it's any bad thing if they think we're doing it primarily to make money. Then if you decide to check out the _Ark_ now it's peacetime and there's nothing more important stopping you while you're up there anyhow-"

"That's probably wise," Wheeljack agreed. "This situation is precarious enough without tempting anyone to take advantage of our hardships."

Mikaela put a preliminary sketch up on their shared whiteboard. "What do you think of something like this?"

"It looks like the space shuttle."

"I did that on purpose. It's familiar to people. This is going to put you out in the public eye, there's no way to avoid that. We don't want to scream _Alien __Spaceship _at people if you land at O'Hare, they had enough of that already. If you're from here now, why not look like it?"

Wheeljack nodded. "Perhaps that should be a design principal from the beginning. I never thought I would be thankful that so much of Earth technology was reverse-engineered from Megatron in the first place, but it means that there are actually few compatibility issues to overcome."

"Just the shift from fossil fuels to energon," she said.

"You should do that anyway. It would be so much safer and more economical, better for the environment."

Mikaela said, "Big Oil would never let us get anywhere with that."

"I suppose not."

"But once we put this baby in the air and start turning a profit, we might get our foot in the door that way. We'd have to prove it wouldn't cause cancer or something."

"Gasoline probably would if you organics ever drank it-that is, if it weren't already _poisonous_. And highly flammable!"

Mikaela laughed. "True."

*-T-F-Rising*

Will and Ironhide came back from the firing range after planning a joint training exercise for the next day. Will made sure his radio was not transmitting. "Hide, is there a reason other than common sense that you guys stopped full contact sparring?"

"Can't answer that, Will. If you ask Prime, he'd probably give you a straight answer."

Will scowled. "That tells me I don't want to know, buddy, not officially anyhow. But if you ever need me to do anything, anywhere, you know you got it."

"I know that. Goes both ways."

Will looked out the side, then did a double take. "What the hell-that's Annabelle on Kaela's four-wheeler!"

Ironhide said, "That's an energon signature! Slag it, that's no four-wheeler, that's Starry!"

"Sara's gonna kill us."

"Chromia'll help, if they find out! Hang on, we can stop them before they get back to base housing if we cut across."

"Go!"

The girls shrieked when they saw Ironhide. Annabelle giggled, "Hide wants to race!"

"Ha! I can go faster than him on the sand, he'll sink down in! Don't fall off!"

Annabelle held tight. "Go faster, he's catching up!"

"Not for long!" She shot down a walkway between two buildings.

A civilian contractor jumped out of the way as a kid on a four-wheeler shot past her. "Damn, kid, are you trying to kill somebody? Get off the sidewalk with that!"

Annabelle yelled, "Sorry!" Nightstar hopped the curb onto the street as soon as they got out from between the buildings.

The contractor pulled her phone out of her pocket. "Yeah, Sara? This is Gladys. Annabelle just blew past me on a four-wheeler headed for the beach. You better get her before the shore patrol catches her on that thing without a helmet."

"Annabelle doesn't have a four-wheeler-_oh!_ Thanks, Gladys, I owe you one!" Sara unplugged the iron then called Chromia. "Pick me up quick, I think Starry has her first alt!"

Chromia let out a delighted yell. "Bring your camera!"

Sara grabbed two helmets on her way out the door. Chromia barely stopped long enough for Sara to jump on.

Ironhide came around the corner on two wheels. Starry saw a narrow opening between some coconut trees and shot through it, knowing it was too small for Ironhide to fit, and he wouldn't want to slam into a palm tree.

"Starry, there's a FENCE!"

"Oh no, I can't stop!"

"Jump over it!"

Will and Ironhide watched them sail over the fence, land perfectly and shoot off up the beach. Hide said, "That's our little femmes!"

Will grinned too. "They're a hell of a team," he agreed proudly.

"Pretty smart, too, heading for the beach," Ironhide had to admit.

"Yeah. If they ever really had to run for their lives, they could." Will got out so Hide could transform to step over the fence, and jumped it himself. They followed the kids' tracks up the beach.

It took them a while to catch up, the little devils found a patch of rocks to cut through that slowed Ironhide quite a bit. He cursed as he had to wade around. Salt water was a glitch to wash off.

The two of them came around a headland to find Chromia taking pictures while Sara put her old helmet on Annabelle. "There, that'll keep you legal until we can buy you some gear that fits. Now remember, girls, you have to stay off the sidewalks, because someone could get hurt."

"Yes, Mommy," Annabelle said.

Will muttered, "Son of a bitch, willya look at that. They think their babies are just adorable. If we'd caught up and yelled at them, we'd have been the ones in the doghouse."

Ironhide snorted agreement.

Starry said, "Look, Mommy, there's Daddy and Uncle Will! I told you we outraced Daddy!" She shot up the beach and transformed as she jumped up into her father's arms. He hugged her tight.

Chromia shined blue as the ocean in the bright sun. Their sparkling giggled joyfully in his arms. It abruptly hit him that he shouldn't even be here. But for the grace of Primus and friends who cared enough to risk their lives for him, it all would have ended in that NEST parking lot two years ago.

Will picked up his own kid. He and Ironhide shared a look and they didn't have to say a word to agree they were the luckiest two guys on the planet.

Kids being kids, they didn't want to be held for very long. Sara took back her camera to take video of them racing in the surf.

Chromia asked, "Have you got time for a run up to the point? The sparklings will love it and they can't ditch you in the rocks again up that way."

Hide growled at that, but didn't faze Chromia because she could feel the humor in it through their spark bond. He transformed.

Will said, "There are advantages to being the boss. I can make time." He kicked sand off his boots before climbing up into Ironhide's cab. He knew they hated it when people tracked too much sand in, to possibly end up getting into internal systems when they transformed and, worst case, distracting them in combat.

Sara's jeans did interesting things as she swung her leg over Chromia's saddle. Ironhide sounded like he was appreciating the view of his own mate as well when he said, "We're gonna have to do this sometime when we can leave the sparklings with Georgie."

"Oh yeah."

*-T-F-Rising*

The next day Ironhide and Chromia were both insufferable bragging about Nightstar's accomplishment. Firecracker and Earthshaker weren't far behind, they sneaked into a construction area and scanned a couple of tracked Bobcats. Earthshaker was a bulldozer and Firecracker a front-end loader.

Shimmer found Dragonfly and Skyrocket watching the bigger sparklings racing around in their alt forms.

Dragonfly said, "It isn't fair. There isn't anything small enough that can fly."

"When you're big you'll be able to fly with the F-15s while the rest of us just watch you from the ground." _In peacetime, please, Primus, in peacetime._

"But that's so _long."_

"Until you find something, you could have a ground alt."

"I know..."

"It just doesn't feel right," Skyrocket said.

She hugged them. "I'm proud of you for knowing what's right for you and waiting for it, instead of rushing into the first thing that comes along. That's really grown-up."

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus Prime was letting Earthshaker help in his office by scanning and filing some paperwork, a much easier job for a little sparkling. "Shaker, I wanted to tell you I'm proud of you for helping Firecracker find an alt form that works with his bad leg."

"That's all that's wrong with him. You can't hardly even tell with tracks stead of wheels. He didn't get his bell rung and get his processor knocked loose and get glitched like I did."

"Seems to me that you're way ahead of a lot of mechs where it really counts. You're probably the reason a lot of the sparklings are alive. That doesn't sound to me like something a glitch would manage to do," Optimus told him. "You came through something that would have destroyed a lot of adult bots and you brought the others through it too. And you grew into a good mech in the process. That makes you a hero in my book, not a glitch."

"I just knew I didn't want to be like the 'Cons. It got so I wasn't scared of getting off-lined, just kinda figured it was bound to happen sooner or later when I made the wrong one mad. I just didn't want to let the others get hurt. I did everything I could and it wasn't enough. They were gonna get rid of all of us and there was nothin' I could've done. If Bee and all o' them hadn't a-showed up when they did, we'd a-been scrap for sure."

Prime knelt to hold the brave little mech close. "You did everything right, Shaker. You kept them together and in as good shape as anyone could have done. You gave them hope in a hopeless situation. Sometimes that's all a leader can do. Sometimes there are fights you just can't win, and you don't always get to find that out before you're right in the middle of it. All you can do then is keep trying, never give up, and hope Primus sends you some help. Sometimes He does."

Shaker held onto him and cried. "Do the ones they killed for parts or-or just stomped on for the fun of it know I done the best I knew how?"

"They do now. They're safe in the Well of All Sparks."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I know it to be true. I was offlined once. I remember very little of what happened after that, but I do know that I was somewhere that I have no fear to return when my time comes, and that I saw others who went before me."

"Every recharge cycle, I dream about the ones I let get offlined."

Prime rumbled quietly, "So do I."

*-T-F-Rising*

A few weeks later, Wheeljack and Mikaela had their design detailed out well enough to go to Prime with it. Mikaela was definitely a very junior assistant engineer on the project. She had watched Wheeljack take her wild ideas and turn them into something practical. Now the discussion was about finding the money to make their plans reality.

Mearing introduced the concept of the grant. "Governments, universities and private foundations all provide funding for projects exactly like this. You've come along at a good time. With the end of the space shuttle program, there's a need. But I know the red tape involved with getting grants is a nightmare. There are people who specialize in writing grant applications. We need to find somebody who can get clearance. NASA owes us a few favors for cleaning up their mess. Let me make some calls."

"What mess did NASA make?" Wheeljack asked.

"Oh, I don't know, overflying the wreck of the _Ark _half a dozen times without noticing there were a few hundred Decepticons hiding within a mile of it? Exactly how did they miss that? Most of those guys were combat pilots, trained observers. Battle damage assessment is what they do. They knew the _Ark _had been shot down. It never occurred to _anybody_ that the people who shot it down just _might've _found the wreckage before we did?" She stopped for a moment, then pulled up a grainy black and white moonscape photo made up of several smaller pictures patched together. "Here's what they had to work with after Apollo 11. None of the computer enhancement we take for granted was available then. Tell me what you see."

All of them looked at the image as if seeing it for the first time.

Mikaela said, "Oh…my God."

Mearing handed her a laser pointer.

Mikaela's hand shook as she indicated what she'd seen-part of a Cybertronian footprint in the shadow of a boulder, not _quite_ brushed away thoroughly enough. "They missed it."

Mearing nodded. She took the pointer back and indicated another spot. "They missed this, too. I think it's a part of a drag mark where somebody moved one of the pillars. The important thing is, it didn't get there by itself."

Simmons said, "Looks like they infiltrated NASA about…what, eight months before we thought they did, to suppress this? Soundwave was damn good. Thank God he decided to come out and fight when he did, otherwise we'd still be matching wits with him."

"There were people in NASA who had the chance to blow the whistle when he first started moving things into place," Mearing said. "At this late date we'll never know why they dropped the ball, but drop it they most certainly did."

Simmons grinned. "They dropped the ball because you were in the fifth grade, Charlotte. You were a little too young to straighten them out."

"Seymour, you're crazy."

"And, so, therefore…?" He replied with a raised eyebrow.

"Prime, with your permission, I'm going to go talk to bean counters now."

(Continued in Part 2)


	16. Moving Forward Part 2

(Chapter 13—Moving Forward Part 2)

(continued from Part 1)

Early Saturday morning, Ironhide found Chromia in their quarters cleaning. He took the broom and swept down the cobwebs. She couldn't reach to do that without climbing, which was never an easy thing for her to do. "So I guess our peacetime job is gonna be space haulers once they get the new ship built," he said.

"I can think of worse things. The humans will pay a lot for it. I hope we can do well enough with something that we won't be dependent on the government. They have elections every time you turn around, and who knows who might get in there. Or what they might ask us to do. Right now it could get really bad for us if we had to tell them no."

"I'm not their fraggin' mercenary."

"Do you think I am? But I can't help being worried where the sparklings are concerned. They came out of such horrible conditions. I never want them hungry again, or without safe shelter."

Ironhide put his arms around her. "We can take care of our sparklings."

"How, Hide? I never thought when the war was over that our entire culture, our whole way of life would just be gone. Or that we would have two very small sparklings depending on us for everything."

Hide grunted agreement, but then he said, "Can't be much different from the end of slavery, can it? The original Primes started out with nothing and built a culture that lasted a couple of million years. We got more to go on than they had."

"They didn't have the humans to contend with. As much as I love them, I have to admit they're the greatest threat we've ever faced."

"And the greatest allies. You know what I think? It was Cybertron's time. We're here to build something new, together with the humans, because they're on track to ruin their planet so bad they're going to die out. All of us together, maybe we can make something that'll last another couple million years."

Chromia nodded. "I guess my worrying about it won't make things any better."

Ironhide offered, "I can give you something else to think about."

She gave him a sultry smile. It occurred to her how little alone time they had managed since adopting the sparklings. By the time they worked all day, collected the kids from school or from whoever was minding them that day, and spent a little time with the extended family or just the four of them, they were ready to hit the berth for nothing but a well-deserved recharge. It was Saturday morning and the kids, children and sparklings alike, were watching kiddie videos and playing games under Flareup's supervision out in the common area. They would be busy all morning. She reached behind her to lock the berth room door then turned her full attention to her sparkmate.

Chromia sometimes wondered what it was like to belong to a species with sexes. To have your mate's body be so different from yours. It was a wonder to her that primitive Earth animals who couldn't exactly have "the talk" with their younglings ever figured out what went where. Georgie had explained it was instinct-hard coded in the bios, essentially.

For Cybertronians, anyone could interface, and it wasn't always what humans understood as sex though the NEST folks weren't shy about making off-color jokes. Parents and sparklings, close friends, and siblings all spark bonded on some level. Everyone could form a data link to upload a lot of information quickly and privately. Everyone could connect energon lines to share with somebody who was dangerously low away from supplies, or power cables to give somebody a jump if they hadn't had a chance to recharge in too long. Those things happened all the time on the battlefield and only the FNKs treated it with anything other than superficial raw humor. Of course now that gay humans could serve openly in the military, a lot of human off-color jokes had become just as superficial and meaningless. Especially here, where nobody wanted to find out how hard Lennox would land on someone idiot enough to undermine unit cohesiveness by harassing a fellow soldier for any ignorant prejudiced reason.

Mating was all of that and more, especially between long term sparkmates. For those precious moments there were no boundaries. They were one spark, neither aware of where one ended and the other began. Having lost each other once, they were so very conscious of how blessed they were. Here, it didn't matter what they had done, what trials they had come through to get to this point. All that mattered was that they _were. _Accepted. Beloved. Forever. Together, soaring into eternal Light and subsiding into recharge in each other's arms as they instinctively disengaged.

Sometime later, they were awakened by a herd of kids invading their quarters, anxious to show them what they did at youth group. Laughing, they made a quick check that all their armor plating was back where it belonged before they joined the kids.

The lounge was jam packed. Annie and Shaker were always there, and if they weren't Firecracker and Starry were with them at their places. But now all the sparklings were there with a bunch of human kids. Mikaela had come to youth group that morning and taught them how to make kites.

Chromia suggested, ::Take them outside with these contraptions?::

::Better, before they demolish the place,:: her mate answered with warm humor.

There were worse ways to spend a Saturday than sitting under a palm tree watching the tribe fly a colorful flock of kites out over the sparkling waves. This was life. Everything else could wait.

Will and Sara came out when Chromia called Sara. Soon Bumblebee showed up with Sam and Carly. Sam got Carly settled on a beach chair in the shade and set up a barbecue grill. Kaela and her boyfriend Russ Michaels walked down hand in hand, she had a boom box and he was pulling a big cooler.

Kaela brought Carly a can of soda. "When do you think?"

The two women looked at each other and realized they no longer had anything to disagree about. As if they had been friends all their lives, Carly laughed. "Any time now, I am _so_ ready to get this sprog out!"

Prime came down with everyone from the admin building. Even Mearing and Simmons came out, Mearing was wearing a coverup and a wide hat over a modest one-piece. After a moment, Georgie brought her over into the circle of women and femmes, and Sara supplied her with a frozen margarita. Quietly Sara said, "Charlotte, this is what you fought a war _for._ Grab it with both hands while you have the chance!"

She looked around at the big gang of friends laughing and dancing under the swaying palms, and the kids romping together nearer the waves. Unexpectedly it felt like the warm tropical breeze was going to carry her right up into the cerulean sky.

Charlotte Mearing had never backed down from a fight in her life. She had stood up to angry Primes and Presidents, just as at home in the Oval Office as she was in Ops. She was the same calm, confident voice from Field Ops as she was testifying before Congress. Whether it was coordinating the fight from a so-called green zone in Chicago that could have turned into the front lines at any moment, or facing up to her mistakes and making it right the best way she could, she had become their irresistible force against whatever immovable object fate threw in their way. But now she realized that she had no clue what to do with the peace.

"Seymour, it's really over, isn't it?"

Seymour Simmons had never thought he was going to fall head over heels in love at his age. After Chicago he had been thankful to survive injuries that could have killed him instead of putting him in months of rehab. He had been granted a second chance to atone for mistakes that he was sure deserved a long stretch in Fort Leavenworth at the very least. Instead he had found forgiveness and a new start. And Charlotte.

At first they had just been frenemies with benefits, like the kids put it these days. They had been what each other needed to get through working their hearts out to help two peoples recover from the horror of a war that had destroyed one world and brought another to the brink. Over the last few months, that friendship had grown rock-solid. The work wasn't over, wouldn't be in their lifetimes, but the crisis was past. Now they were building the future. If Simmons had ever wanted anything in his life, he wanted to build that future with this indomitable woman.

His hand brushed a small box that had been in his pocket for a few weeks now, as he got up the courage and tried to find the words. "No, it's just starting," he said with all the hope and conviction in his heart. He fished out the box and went to one knee in the sand before her beach chair. "Charlotte Mearing, I love you with everything I am and I will for the rest of my life. Will you make me the happiest man in the world by becoming my wife?"

Mearing stared, her eyes filling with tears of joy for the first time in far too many years. "Yes. _Yes!" _And then he was kissing her as if that moment would last for the rest of their lives.

After a long moment, they came up for air and realized their friends were cheering and applauding. Then she was surrounded by the sisters she hadn't realized she had, showing off her ring, while the guys congratulated Simmons.

Sara was so right. Grab it with both hands indeed.

The beach party went on long into the night, until Carly surprised everyone by going into labor.

There was a brief panic before she was surrounded by calm, in-charge medics who checked her over, congratulated her, and then Ratchet whisked her off to the Navy base hospital while Bee and Sam swung by their quarters to pick up her bag.

As it got late, nobody was in a hurry to leave. People slept and recharged on the beach, some of them staying awake in shifts to watch out for nothing deadlier than an opportunistic coconut crab. Kids and sparklings slept curled up next to their parents.

A few die-hards took the boom box further down the beach, the strains of Margaritaville playing distantly from where they danced around a bonfire under the stars.

Will finished a walk around the perimeter, where he had quietly woke up a passed-out-overloaded set of Little Twins and sent them to higher ground before the tide came in. Ordinarily he would have said something about that, except for two things. For one, they were quieter drunk than they were sober, not creating an embarrassing scene in front of the kids. For another, sometimes they were haunted by memories that their twin bond helped them deal with but also reinforced, and getting overloaded helped them forget for a while. So did being close to their clan where those bonds were strongest. Those episodes became less frequent as time passed.

He saw Prime's optics glowing with wakefulness and joined him up on the grass by the back wall of the motor pool, where they could talk quietly without waking anyone up. Will had noticed early on that either Prime, Hide or Sideswipe would be on duty twenty-four seven. Now that things had calmed down they were more willing to hand off to Ratchet or one of the Sisters, who were all seen as responsible and familiar enough with the command center to serve as officer of the watch. Sunny was part of that group now, and Shimmer, Bee and Georgie were learning. Right now the Big Twins were down the beach with the party animals, Bee was with Sam at the base hospital, and everyone else was asleep.

Will looked over where Sara was lying with Annie, one arm protectively around their daughter. You could take the woman out of the Marines but you couldn't take the Marines out of the woman. He knew that if he got within ten feet of them, she'd be wide awake, and for just a second until she took in the situation, he'd be looking into the eyes of a stone cold killer. That was just one of the many things they understood and accepted about each other.

The lights of a small boat glowed a couple hundred yards out. Prime felt his scan overlap with Sides', both of them agreed it was just the Navy patrol. A human reaction time later, the sailors picked up the scans on the boat's IFF and blinked a response as they went on about their business.

Prime asked, "Will, is Carly likely to have any trouble?"

"Not that I know of, why?"

"I have run across a lot of troubling information regarding complications of human birth on the Internet."

Will said, "Carly's healthy and strong, Optimus, and nobody's mentioned any reason I'd have to be concerned. Yeah, things can go wrong, God knows I was glad when Annie got here safe. But Carly has the best doctors in the business."

*-T-F-Rising*

At 1400h on Sunday afternoon, Carly gave birth to Daniel James Spencer-Witwicky. It was the middle of the night in LA and early morning in London when the proud parents video called the grandparents to let them know the good news.

*-T-F-Rising*

In the far reaches of space, a battered Autobot, the last survivor of her squad, turned to her comms array as her scout ship picked up a distant signal. Whatever color she had once been, now all her paint was carbonized flat black from more battles that she could count, and once shining chrome was now a uniform dark smoky gray. The only color was the bright, piercing blue of her optics and the deep orange-red glow at her wrists from a pair of energon daggers. She stood almost twenty-six feet tall, well above average for a femme of her long-ago time.

A nondescript mining planet receded behind her. Until she had started picking up this static-laden signal a few cycles ago, she had thought it sheltered the last living children of Cybertron. She and her squad had paid a dear price to eradicate the Decepticon presence in the area, but it was ultimately all for nothing. When the few who remained passed through the Veil, it had seemed the saga of proud Cybertron would come to an end.

Even with her scout enhancing the brief signal the next time it repeated, she got little but coordinates and a Prime-level authorization code. Wearily, she input the coordinates into the navigation system and told the ship to wake her at their destination. In order to save resources and allow some measure of self repair, she let herself drop into stasis lock. If she was lucky, if her scoutship found a few active jump points, she might just get there alive. If there were more of her people wherever the signal had originated, perhaps it was some sort of hope for the small village of survivors who prayed for her success. Against all common sense, she had to try.


	17. Terrorist

(Chapter 14—Terrorist)

(2014—Diego Garcia)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

The passage of a year had changed some things on Diego Garcia. Simmons and Mearing had gone back to New York to get married over the holidays. His mother had been bemused that he had found a shiksa to marry, but she had given up hope on her son ever finding anyone at his age, so she was happy. Her family consisted of an elderly great-aunt who barely remembered who got her mixed up with her mother when they came to visit. They got married at the court house and spent the rest of the day wandering downtown, trying to be at home bundled up in coats amid falling snowflakes. They went out to a nice restaurant and saw a Broadway show before they went back to their hotel, but as soon as they came up for air they found themselves missing sea breezes and swaying palms. The next day they caught the train south, spent a couple days in Washington taking care of things there, then caught a flight _home_. Home was a strange and wonderful concept to people who had spent so much time living under aliases in hotels and apartments all over the world. They moved into base housing and put up Christmas lights and spent Christmas Eve on the beach, drinking margaritas and watching the tide come in. Life was good.

Slowly but surely the sparklings left their horrible past with the Decepticons behind and became a part of the constant rhythm of life on Diego Garcia. They were the first generation to grow up with human children. Sparklings stayed sparklings for about the same length of time that children stayed children. The sad difference was that a whole human lifetime passed while a young adult Cybertronian remained a young adult, but that wasn't something either kind of kids cared about right now. Some fan of Survivor started calling the whole noisy, rambunctious ornery lot of them "the tribe" and it stuck. They all ended up in school together. While the sparklings, of course, downloaded most of their rote knowledge, there was a lot more to an education than memorizing facts. The human kids grew up learning about Cybertron with their bot classmates, and it was as much ancient history to all of them as studying about Ancient Greece. None of them had ever set foot or ped there. They were all Earthlings.

Their elders made a conscious decision to teach them only the best of their history right now. All the unfairness of the caste system and the sad history that had led to a suicidal war could wait until they were much older. It wasn't part of their lives, and wouldn't ever be. That history took on a once-upon-a-time flavor. If that saddened the bots who remembered Cybertron-that-Was, it didn't upset the younger ones like Shimmer and Bumblebee and Jolt, who remembered only ruins and death and misery.

Sam and Carly were thankful to have a time of peace with their new son. Carly chose to be a stay-at-home Mom until he was six months old, but by then there were enough little babies that one of the corpsmen's wives started a day care. She started working in Ops with Sam. Her background with the British diplomatic service had been good experience. After a few weeks of training, she and Sam were able to work opposite shifts most of the time, so Danny usually had one parent at home.

Bee and Shimmer started to form a relationship around taking care of the two little seekers, Skyrocket and Dragonfly. At first, their partnership was simply for the purpose of raising the sparklings, a very common thing among their people. They were dear friends who had survived a war together, but over time they began to see each other as more than that. They decided not to worry too much about how much more it might one day become.

Mikaela had the real inclination to become a workaholic. When she wasn't in Medbay with Ratchet, she was out at the site working with Wheeljack on the construction of the _Xanthium II._ They brought in human contractors to do some of the work, and Mikaela had more of a temperament to keep them and the Wreckers on track than the more easygoing Wheeljack did. She learned a lot more in a year of practical hard work than she had in four years of college. Russ made it his objective in life to distract her from her work in every way possible, and Wheeljack and Ratchet were happy to collaborate in his efforts. "Mikaela works too hard" became one of the truths of the science section, as much as "Ratchet throws a mean wrench" and "Wheeljack blows things up."

First Aid and Jolt were able to become Ratchet's full time apprentices, without constant interruptions from the 'Cons. That took a lot of the workload and worry off Ratchet. It had been a terrible responsibility to be the only bot with his skills at his age. Wheelie and Brains ended up spending most of their time in the science section as well. Their small size was just useful for too many things. Sometimes Sam came and got them to help with data analysis up in Ops, they were very good at that. But Wheelie especially was attached to Mikaela and he was happiest when he was working on whatever she was working on. And where you found Wheelie, you found his brother.

Sunstreaker had more trouble dealing with having been a captive than First Aid and Chromia did. Chromia had understandably had so much bigger fish to fry at the time that her captivity had become a non-issue to her. First Aid had chosen a healer's path because he was a pacifist at spark. He could fight, and would, to defend his clan or especially his patients. Fighting his way out of an ambush, though, wasn't something he had ever expected himself to be able to do, and no one else had expected him to do it either. Sunstreaker, like his twin, was one of the Autobots' most feared and respected front-line fighters. It took a lot to convince him he had been captured thanks to some good planning and a lot of luck on the 'Cons' part, not because he had let the team down.

As the Gulf War tailed off, NEST took over more and more of the day to day life on the island. There were fewer ships in port and fewer support personnel needed as a result.

One afternoon in June of 2014, Annie and Starry stood outside the chain link fence that marked the perimeter of the construction site where the _Xanthium II _was taking shape. From this distance Annie couldn't have heard Kaela shouting orders to a group of construction workers, if Starry hadn't picked it up and played it over her radio. Both girls were giggling over the four-letter words.

They heard tracks grinding over sand and gravel, and waved at Firecracker and Shaker. Their human friend John Parker was with them. He was the ten-year-old son of the human CMO, Dr. Alicia Parker, and had become friends with Shaker while his mom was visiting with Ratchet one evening to go over some coordination issues for an island wide disaster drill. John was a quiet, bookish geeky kid who tended not to get along with the other army brats. Most of them were more oriented to athletics and didn't have a lot in common with a smart kid in thick glasses. He and Shaker couldn't have been more opposite, but Ratchet and Alicia were convinced they, and Starry and Annie, had the first interspecies sibling bonds in all history.

John jumped out of Shaker's cab and the two mechs transformed. John had a pair of binoculars, which he shared with Annie. Firecracker asked, "What kind of trouble are you two rugrats getting into?"

"We're not rugrats! I'll be in second grade when school starts!" Annie yelled, aiming a kick which the mech avoided. Actually, Firecracker liked it that Annie didn't treat him differently for having a bad leg, even when it came to horseplay. They were still small enough to roughhouse with their human playmates without hurting them by just shoving and so forth, though they had to watch their servos and peds if they had claws.

Starry had to claim Firecracker as her brother because they had the same parents, but she still considered him a pest. She made a rude noise at him, which made Annie grin because she knew what it meant. The boys decided they didn't need to hang out with little girls.

Starry and Annie were getting tired of watching through the fence. They headed home to watch cartoons or something, but Annie's mom was out. The neighbor lady was watching for them, and she told them to go straight up to the Autobots' building and stay with Ironhide and Chromia.

Annie asked, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, but you're supposed to go straight there with no fooling around. Scat." The lady swept the porch step, scowling as if she'd like to take the broom to their backsides instead.

Annie wrinkled her nose as she buckled her helmet back on. She did not like the mean neighbor lady. "We'd better hurry, Starry."

"OK, you drive, I'm going to call Daddy and find out what's happening. It can't be 'Cons, cause your mom would be home if it was that."

Annie hurried to take control. Once they had run into a big patch of weeds when Starry was talking to somebody without watching where she was going. The two kids had no idea that was a level of trust that the adult Autobots had a lot of trouble with. It would take a real emergency for one of them to relinquish control to a human driver.

::Daddy, it's Starry. Why are Annie and me supposed to go to our quarters?::

::Sparkling, Uncle Will and Aunt Sara had a little accident. Now they're gonna be OK but they're getting patched up.::

::What kinda accident?::

::I'm still tryin' to get to the bottom of that myself, OK, Sparkling? Be good little femmes and go home to Mommy.::

::Yes, Daddy.::

::Where's your brother?::

::Out someplace with Shaker and John.::

Ironhide picked up on her annoyance with her brother and couldn't help chuckling a little despite his concern for his friends. ::Call him and tell him I said for them to get home too, just till we figure out what happened.::

::Yes, Daddy.::

Ironhide had been careful not to let his fear and anger bleed through to Starry, but it hadn't been easy. Like he had told the MPs about a dozen times now, he had taken Will and Sara to the base post office to pick up their mail. He had been waiting for them on the streetcorner outside talking to some Marines when there had been an explosion from inside. The Marines had instantly run inside, while he had transformed and scanned for any attackers in the area while he called it in. Almost immediately the whole place had been mobbed by medics and the shore patrol.

He had heard someone yell about white powder and ran a scan for biohazards. The bomb, because that was what it had been, had been contaminated with anthrax. Apparently it had been sealed up well enough not to trip any alarms until it went off. The package had been opened by a sailor who had been killed in the explosion. Everyone else had relatively minor injuries from the blast, and had been exposed to anthrax.

He knew Will and Sara were OK for the time being, they were being given antibiotics to keep them from getting anthrax. Will and Sara, like all the military personnel, had been vaccinated. While not perfect, the vaccine was over 90% effective. They still had to take IV antibiotics for 60 days.

It was looking like Will and Sara had been innocent bystanders caught up in a terrorist attack. The sailor who had been killed was stationed at the port here. His duties had nothing to do with NEST.

The MPs let Ironhide go, asking him to make himself available to NCIS agents when they arrived. He was the best possible eyewitness to a crime, since he would be able to report exactly what happened, and his sensors detected a wider range of data than humans were aware of.

Hide contacted Ratchet to have him figure out the best and quickest way to decontaminate a bot who got into anthrax spores, before they could spread it to humans, in case this wasn't an isolated incident. Then he went up to their housing to check on the kids.

Annie and Starry came running. Annie, of course, wanted to know when she could see her mom and dad.

Ironhide sat down on the floor so they could sit on his lap, and held them for a minute while he figured out how to explain it to little ones. "I don't know, Sparkling. What happened was, somebody mailed a bomb to a sailor. This wasn't anybody your parents knew, he just happened to be there at the same time they were. Will and Sara got lots of cuts and scratches but they weren't hurt very bad. The thing is, the bomb had germs in it, so your mom and dad have to have some medicine to make sure they don't get sick. The medicine comes in an IV. You know, the bag on the pole with a needle they stick in a line in your arm?"

Annabelle nodded. "I had one of them when I had my tonsils took out."

"We don't know how long they have to stay in the hospital to get the medicine before the doctors will let them go home."

Annie asked, "Where do I have to go while they're in the hospital?"

"Right here," Ironhide assured her.

Chromia said, "Why don't you get out your sleeping bag and put it in Starry's berth room, then we'll go over to the mess hall and get you some dinner."

The girls went down the hall to Starry's room. Her berth was the same low metal platform that all the bots had. In her storage alcove was an air mattress and a sleeping bag with princesses and ponies printed on it. Starry blew up the air mattress by venting into it while Annie shook out her sleeping bag.

John asked, "My mom wants to know if I can sleep over tonight too. She's on duty because of the bombing."

Chromia said, "That's fine. After dinner we can go by your house to get your things. Do you have a sleeping bag?"

"I can use Mom's bedroll. She won't care."

"OK."

Ironhide told Chromia, ::If you have the kids, I'm going over to the base hospital to see what I can find out.::

::Hopefully they can go home soon, or at least move to the medbay.::

::Not as long as Alicia has to work over there.::

::Yes, it would be silly to scatter her patients all over the island.::

Ironhide found Shimmer in the parking lot, she had sent her remote into the hospital. A few times she had been commandeered and sent to move patients around the hospital, but mostly she hung around the nurses' station waiting for news or the chance to talk to one of the Lennoxes. She reported, ::I talked to Will after he went through decontamination. He says they feel okay, they just have to have the antibiotics because they were pretty close to the explosion. They both breathed the powder. I told him Annabelle is at your place.::

::Where are your kids?::

::Home with Bee.::

Flareup's twins were always with her when they weren't in school, either playing around wherever she was working or recharging in a compartment that she had fashioned for them. They were so small that she felt safer with them behind her armor rather than out where even a human could seriously injure one of them by stepping on them. Ironhide told her, ::Shaker is with Firecracker, and John is staying the night while Alicia is working.::

::Do you think there will be more of this incident?::

::I doubt it, at least not where we're concerned. No telling what fragger sent the bomb, but they'll get him. I'm going to stay for a while, if you want to go home.::

Shimmer replied, ::It's handy to have my remote in there, but it gets glitchy if I try to control it from too far away. I don't want to try that in a crowd of humans, someone could get hurt.::

::Got it covered.:: Ironhide transformed and produced a remote of his own, a large black dog-like quadruped. The whole dying thing wasn't something he would recommend, but there were advantages to an occasional less drastic reformat. His old frame had long ago lost the ability to create a remote.

::All right, if they need me to cover a station in Ops tomorrow I'll send somebody else to take over for you in the morning.:: She retrieved her remote and went home.

Ironhide sent his remote up the fire stairs and ambled over to the nurses' station. A nurse did a double-take, didn't recognize him but relaxed marginally when she saw blue optics. "Identify yourself," she snapped in a no nonsense tone. Respecting her fearless attitude, he did so immediately.

She grinned. "I didn't know you could do that! Cool! The colonel and his wife are around the corner in room 219. You can go in, but let them sleep."

"Are they contagious? Do I have to worry about spreading it to other humans?"

"Not at this point, they've been decontaminated."

Will was asleep, but Ironhide found himself staring down the barrel of Sara's sidearm when he opened the door. He identified himself with alacrity, a Beretta could easily offline a small remote like this in the hands of a Marine sharpshooter, and that wouldn't be a fun experience. She engaged the safety and whispered, "Since when are you a pit bull?"

Ironhide thought that humans in the hospital weren't usually armed. Someone must have smuggled her sidearm in to her. Not that he blamed them, he was always of the opinion that it was smarter to have a weapon that you never had to use, than to need one and not have it. "It's just a remote. I wasn't able to do it before, not since I got busted up in a fight with Shockwave back on Cybertron."

She lay back. Band-aids were plastered all over her face and arms, and she had several stitched cuts that weren't covered as well. "Is Annie OK?"

"She's staying in Starry's berth room. She's worried and anxious to talk to you, but we didn't tell her what kind of germs it was."

"Good. I'd like to get my hands on whatever fragger did this, but hopefully all of us except the poor SOB who opened the package will be OK."

"The nurse said let you sleep, so you better get some rest. I'll be right here."

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus Prime stood at the floor to ceiling window behind his desk looking out over the harbor, where a fleet of warships rode at deceptively peaceful anchor under the brilliant tropical stars. Long ages ago, for a short time, he had a sparkmate. He had been simply Orion Pax then, just one of several mechs who bore the Prime sigil, who may or may not ever be called to serve. His beautiful Ariel hadn't cared one way or the other. They had simply been a young mech and his femme, in love and so happy. Then had come the devastating attack on their city and she had been gone.

To this day he didn't really understand why he hadn't joined her. Rationality insisted that it was because he had been called then to join the Council of Primes, and his new responsibilities at the dawn of the war had given him a sense of purpose beyond himself. But the truth was, he had never truly accepted that his love was gone. Now and then he felt...something...through their spark bond, like an echo of distant song or the fleeting caress of a momentary breeze, that refused to allow him to despair. Just memory, he told himself. But no matter how many hundreds of vorns passed, stubborn hope refused to listen.

There was a knock at the door. "Enter."

Georgie stepped in, obviously wrong-footed to find him standing in the dark. "Prime...?"

"Just memories, Georgie, that's all. And old habits about standing by an open window at night with the room lights on," he said, drawing the curtain and turning on the lights. "What do you have for me?"

"Admiral Sandrington would like to speak to you, if you have a moment."

"Is Director Mearing in Ops?"

"No, Prime, Seymour finally got her to take a few hours off."

"I'll take it in here then."

"Yes, Prime."

He patched the call through to his desk rather than his integrated comm, so that he could send a return video feed. Admiral Sandrington was an older gentleman with an upper-crust Virginia accent.

"Admiral, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

"Not at all, Prime." The admiral was a born diplomat, and he had-unlike most humans-caught on right away the the word "Prime" was a title and a term of respect, not strictly speaking Optimus' last name. "Have you any news on your personnel who were injured in the blast?"

"The last report from the hospital is that they are in good condition. They're only being kept as inpatients due to the medications that they are receiving. I'm very sorry about the loss of your man."

"Thank you. I just wanted to let you know I received a preliminary report on the bombing. The device apparently originated here on the island. We recovered a scrap of the label and we've been able to confirm that it didn't come onto the island through the usual channels."

"I see. Is there any way that NEST can assist in your investigation?"

"There may be. I understand that your mech was able to detect traces of the contaminant from the street outside following the explosion?"

"That is correct."

"If you could assist in searching the island for the location where the bomb was produced, I would be in your debt, sir."

"I'll loan you a few of my people. Where shall I have them rendezvous?"

"The NBC team is mobilizing out of the fire station."

"They'll be on their way in five minutes, sir."

"Thank you, Prime."

"My pleasure, Admiral, and it would be theirs as well if they were to be the ones to bring the suspect in."

The admiral chuckled, "I can imagine. There are already quite a number of people vying for that honor. Good night, Prime."

"Good night, Admiral."

Prime disconnected the link, then commed Georgie. ::Take Shimmer and Wheeljack and meet the Navy Nuclear, Biological and Chemical team at the fire station. Apparently the bomb was assembled here. They would like you to help search for the lab.::

::Yes, Prime. Do you want me to get Sunstreaker to cover Ops?::

::That won't be necessary, I'll come out there and take the rest of the shift myself. It's nearly the end of the watch anyway.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Georgie passed along the command to the other two bots, who met her in the common room. They were quiet and stayed in bipedal mode until they got out in the parking lot, so they didn't alarm the sparklings or disturb anybot who was recharging.

The NBC team was glad to have them. They made sure they had the proper definition files for the strain of anthrax that they were looking for, then got assigned an area to search.

Georgie stayed in alt form rather than cause any excitement by stomping around base housing in the middle of the night in robot form. Her scans came up negative, until she neared a disused storage building at the end of the street. She didn't detect any anthrax, but she did scent a faint whiff of energon.

::Shimmer, do you know if the kids have been playing around an old garage near the beach at the end of G street? I can smell energon down here.::

::I don't think so, if they're not playing on the beach they've been outside the launching pad fence watching the ship come together. Tell Prime, then hold your position until I get there to back you up. I'm on E street right now.::

::Right.:: Georgie didn't relax her guard for a moment as she informed the Autobot leader of her discovery.

He replied thoughtfully, ::A signature that faint has to be very old, or left by a sparkling...or a remote. Be very careful, Georgie. Some of the Decepticons can control a remote at quite some distance.::

::I will,:: she promised.

Shimmer arrived. ::You're right, I smell it too.::

::Prime thinks it might be a remote. How do you think we should handle this?::

::I'm not calling some human down here with the keys if there's a 'Con remote in there! Would you rather kick the door or cover me while I do it?::

::I'll kick the door. You're a better shot. Just try not to shoot towards the garage if you can help it. _All_ we need to do is bust something with anthrax in it.::

::OK::

The two femmes transformed. Georgie thought it might not be a good idea to kick down the garage door without looking first to see what might be leaning against it. She bent over to look through dirty panes of glass in the door to see if she was likely to knock anything over. Instead she saw two optics so red they were almost purple, and whatever it was sprang right at her face like a snake striking.

That was not the smartest thing in the world to do to a black belt, because she still had the same instincts and now she had a bot's reaction time. She yelled, jerked her head back, and grabbed all at the same time as it crashed through the glass in the door.

A stream of stinking yellow fluid shot over her shoulder. She and Shimmer both screamed like little sparklings as they recognized acid rust.

Shimmer screamed, "THROW IT!"

Georgie flung it out over the beach. Shimmer opened fire. The projectiles stitched down its sinuous length, bursting its acid rust containers. By the time it hit the sand it was already dissolving.

Shimmer roughly propelled Georgie under a street light, frantically checking for acid burns. A splatter was survivable if you quickly ripped off infected plates before it could spread further and infect vital systems. By the time they were sure she was unharmed, both of them were sobbing with terrified relief.

Prime roared up and slowed with a loud squeal of brakes, transforming before he ever came to a stop.

By then every light on the street was on. A group of military people from all branches who just happened to live on that street were gathering with their personal weapons, they were quickly organizing into a platoon and breaking into fire teams. Somebody yelled at a kid to get the hell in the house and stay there. Optimus asked the ranking officer, a Marine captain, to organize a defensive line to stop anything that got past them from getting to the houses.

He got a half incoherent report from Georgie and Shimmer, but the stench of acid rust and the smoking remains of the centipede-thing spoke volumes. Seconds later Wheeljack arrived and scanned both of them to make sure they were unharmed. Not long after that, the Big Twins got there along with an APC full of NEST troops.

Sideswipe moved faster than any of them had ever seen, his sword slicing another of the many legged horrors in two before it could spit acid at him. He ejected his contaminated blade before the rust could spread to his arm. "Prime, I found a fraggin' nest of them over here!"

Sunny took aim and fired a full magazine down a hole in the sand, killing the ones he hit as well as the ones their acid rust spilled on.

Graham brought up a rocket launcher. "Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, if you wouldn't mind stepping back with the others, I'm about to make quite a mess." He made sure they were all dead by firing a rocket into the hole. Contaminated sand spewed like a geyser.

Wheeljack warned, "Make sure nobody gets in any pools of that slag, it's just as corrosive to biologics as it is to us! I'll go get some neutralizer from my workshop."

There were no more in the building, but the NBC team found anthrax and bomb making supplies in there.

Prime made sure Shimmer and Georgie were OK. They were both badly shaken, but otherwise all right. Prime couldn't blame them. After what had happened to Ironhide, the whole thing was doubly nightmarish.

In a nod to the femmes' relative inexperience, he sent Shimmer with the twins and took Georgie with him and Wheeljack as they carefully scanned the entire island. By dawn they were satisfied there were no more of them.

What made it worse was, they had no idea which 'Con had hatched the plot. They weren't sure how the timing of the attack had been pulled off, but 'Con involvement made it seem more than likely that Will had been the target after all. With that in mind, Alicia sent him and Sara up to the NEST medbay where they could be better guarded.

The existence of a six foot long snakelike thing that could spew a weapon of terror like acid rust seriously spooked everyone, bots and humans alike. To make it worse, after Wheeljack and Ratchet analyzed the bits they were able to salvage, they determined two things. They were made entirely of Terran materials, meaning that whoever made these could repeat the attack as soon as he could build more of them. Also, they were drones, not actually somebot's remotes, which meant that the 'Con who had sent them could be safely hiding in a cave somewhere halfway around the world.

The only link the NCIS was able to find between Will and the dead sailor was a habit of picking up their mail around the same time.

There was little they could do, other than double the number of energon detectors on the island to enhance the chances of catching any more of them that tried to crawl ashore. It was anything other than foolproof, though, because some Decepticons did have energon masking systems just like Mirage and their three scouts, Prime ordered that no one was to go around alone, and all the kids were kept close to home. Their sense of safety on Diego Garcia had been completely shattered.

Three days later, Sara Lennox started coughing up blood.

When Ratchet tried to suggest that Will go back to his own room for a rest, he got a look that he was sure nobot other than a 'Con had seen before. "Do you have any idea how often I have _not _been here for my wife when she needed me? _I'm here now_."

Ratchet backed off, saying something about sparkbonds weren't supposed to be physically possible between humans, but obviously somebody had got their data fragged up about that. They moved Will's bed in there, so that he would at least have somewhere other than the chair to sleep.

They presented a united front until everyone else left, but then Sara said, "You need to take care of yourself, hon. Also, I want you to go spend some time with Annabelle. She needs to know you're OK, since it looks like I'm going to be in here for a while."

Will had to accept the common sense in that. "We made it through three damn wars. You're not allowed to let a motherfuckin' bug take you out."

"Is that an order, Colonel?"

"You bet your ass it is, Marine!"

Sara sketched a salute, a little sloppy because the IV line was in the way. "Yes, sir!"

She had no intention of dying here. Sara Lennox had too much to live for. But that was the beginning of the fight of her life. She persuaded Will to go back on duty once he no longer needed the IV. She needed for him to be doing something to catch the 'Con behind this, and he needed to get out of the hospital room. He wouldn't accept touchy-feely emotional support from anyone but her, but his team would be there for him in more appropriate ways.

One advantage to medbay over the base hospital was that Annie was in the same building. Ratchet had no problem with well-behaved, supervised kids visiting his medbay for short times. Will had a long talk with her about what she was going to see, so the monitors wouldn't scare her. She had to wear a mask and a paper gown. But Sara made herself sit up in bed and smile, suppressing the painful cough by sheer determination, laughing with her baby girl. Will laughed and smiled right along with her, but he knew Sara was deliberately making sure if she didn't make it, Annie's last memory of her would be a good one.

Once Ironhide's remote form took Annie to the humans' mess area to scrounge up some ice cream, Sara's expression changed. Not to fear or uncertainty, but to that of a warrior preparing for battle.

The next ten days were a haze of fever and pain and never enough air to breathe. She suffered through a spinal tap and found out that the disease had progressed to meningitis. Alicia tried other antibiotics besides the Cipro, which for some reason wasn't working for her.

One night Will had to get out. Ironhide found him on the firing range, taking out his helpless rage on the targets.

"That fuckin' COWARD!" He finally yelled. "This is some slag of a little coward who's too afraid to come out and fight, so he thinks he's gonna hide in his hole and pick us off one at a time! This had _my_ name on it, but my wife and a whole bunch of other innocent people got in the way."

Ironhide had never seen Will that scared or angry before. No matter what they had been through, his human brother had always been in control, thinking three or four steps ahead of the enemy. He rumbled agreement. That _was_ the exact situation, it was what a lot of low-level Decepticons did when you put their backs to the wall. "What did the doctors say?"

"This last antibiotic didn't work either. Alicia didn't say it, but I could tell. She doesn't think it looks good. They're running out of stuff to try."

"Yeah, well, if they run out of medicine there's one thing they forgot about," Ironhide told him.

"What's that?"

"Sara."

Will took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You got that right," he finally grated. "I have to get back."

"C'mon."

They cut through the common room. Somebody had brought in a bunch of game consoles, and there was a Call of Duty tournament going on. It was one activity where the humans and the bots could go full out against each other on a level playing field. Will also realized it gave the bots a whole lot better perspective on what exactly their human counterparts could and could not do on the battlefield. Shimmer especially excelled at it, playing a sniper she actually liked her little avatar's ability to get into places that she couldn't in real life-not without making use of her stealth form, anyway. Georgie didn't like video games, but then she of all people didn't need any help thinking like a human.

Ratchet had the medbay doors shut to keep the noise out in the common area.

Sara opened her eyes a little. "What's up?"

"Call of Duty tournament."

She laughed a little. "Damn busman's holiday."

"No shit." He pulled on a mask and gown and gloves and sat down beside her.

Sara's fingers were so hot laced with his. After a little while, she fell asleep, and he just sat there keeping watch. If there was nothing else he could do, at least he could do that.

*-T-F-Rising*

Two nights later, he had just put Anna to bed when the phone rang. Sara had taken a turn for the worse. Ironhide came and got them. Annie asked, "What happened to Mommy?"

"I don't know, Sparkling, Alicia was working on her and Ratchet told me to come and get you."

They couldn't go in. But Will saw the crash cart and he knew it was bad, very bad. Chromia took Annie to wait somewhere besides right outside the door. Ironhide waited with Will.

A nurse came down the hall with another cart of some kind and busted through the door with it. While the door was open, Will saw Sara on a vent and her bed surrounded by doctors and nurses.

This was an enemy he couldn't fight. He was losing his wife and there was nothing he could do. Nothing except pray to God to take him instead-and when did that prayer ever get answered?

Gossip spreads like wildfire on a small military base. It wasn't five minutes until the phones in Heaven and the Well of All Sparks were all ringing off the walls. And Sara fought for her life, long past the point when most people would have gone into the light. If Death wanted her, he was damn well going to have to come up, look her in the eye, and drag her off.

More because she was out of options than because she expected it to work, Alicia resorted to penicillin. And, very slowly, Sara turned the corner.

It was a long fight back, but six weeks later, Sara went home. She rode out to Ironhide in a wheelchair, but she walked through her own front door.


	18. The Hunt

(Chapter 15—The Hunt)

(2014—Baku, Azerbaijan)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

A few days after Sara Lennox went home from the hospital, more of the centipede drones turned up in Azerbaijan. They were on a transport fifteen minutes later. The Autobot team consisted of Ironhide, the Sisters, and Wheeljack. The scientist hoped to capture one of the drones for study-or at least kill one without having it rust away to nothing.

They were taking no chances, all the bots had subspaced as much neutralizer as they could carry.

Mearing was also with them, to deal with the Azerbaijani government, who suspected the Americans of ulterior motives for sending the Autobots onto their soil. Many of them still thought their military could deal with the problem themselves. Rather than bring up accusations of spying, her telemetry gear consisted only of a briefcase comms unit and a headset with a HUD panel over one eye. Since they didn't have to coordinate ops in multiple areas, it would have to be sufficient.

They landed at Baku airport, only to have their transport surrounded by the army. There were several tanks, back far enough to fire at least a round or two before any of the bots could get to them. They didn't know Ironhide had firing solutions on all of them before he rolled down the C-130's ramp, and they sure didn't know how fast he could fire if he had to. He would obey Prime's order not to fire on humans, they all would if it killed them. But there was one big loophole in that order and that was protecting other humans. This would go straight to the Pit in a hurry if the locals starting shooting at the NEST team. The bots had decided to stay in alt form for now, mixed in with the NEST troops' two APCs, hoping they would be less likely to invite aggression that way than if they were towering over a bunch of nervous trigger fingers in bipedal mode.

Human troops on both sides had their weapons pointed at the ground, a deceptively casual, non-threatening stance that could turn belligerent in a split second. Clearly nobody wanted to start anything. Will and the Azerbaijani commander quickly identified each other and exchanged respectful nods.

Only Mearing spoke Azerbaijani, so all everyone else could do was watch while she negotiated with a group of local politicos.

A spectacular explosion and a huge column of fire and black smoke a few miles away brought negotiations to an abrupt halt. Mearing wryly commed Ironhide and Lennox that the prevailing agreement was to let the bots take care of their own criminals, as long as they did it somewhere else besides the oil wells. Both of them laughed and Lennox ordered his troops to mount up. Once they were out of the city, Wheeljack took point because he had the best sensor array. Just because they were headed towards the huge oil well fire didn't mean the 'Cons were going to stay there. He was careful not to outrun the APCs.

The explosion had accounted for a few of the centipedes. Wheeljack doused the remains with neutralizer and subspaced everything big enough to collect. He didn't want the Azerbaijanis experimenting with them. Meanwhile everyone else spread out to assist wounded Azerbaijani soldiers and secure the area until their own medics could get there. Lennox spoke enough Arabic and Farsi to communicate with a few of them who also spoke the languages, that they were able to tell him which way the centipedes had gone.

Acid rust caused some horrendous chemical burns on humans, but it didn't spread like it would on bots, or anything made of metal for that matter. The survivors had splatter injuries, not direct hits, painful but survivable.

After a while, more Azerbaijani troops and ambulances got there.

The centipedes had made for rough territory that the APCs couldn't negotiate. From the attack site, they advanced on foot, weapons ready. The Azerbaijanis were astounded to see the bots and the humans moving together as a unit, everyone obviously knowing their job and doing it without regard to the size of the next guy. They were even more surprised to see Ironhide deferring to Will. That was purely a chain of command thing, it could and had been the other way around on other missions when the mission parameters worked better that way.

Only Chromia and Will had a clue that Ironhide was scared stiff of going up against that stuff again. He did what millennia of warfare had taught him to do, crammed the fear into a box in the back of his processor to deal with it later. But that was primarily why he took second seat on this one, if he glitched out he knew Will would get them all home. Not that he was planning on doing that. But just in case.

After they had climbed a rocky hillside and started down the other side, Wheeljack reported, "There's energon trace. We must be gaining on them."

Ironhide still wasn't picking up anything. From that he guesstimated that the minibots had passed by around fifteen or twenty minutes ago. "It sounds like they hung around on the ridge for a while before they came down here."

Flareup stopped suddenly and jumped back with a little scream. "Look out! There's a big puddle of acid rust here, I almost got in it!"

Wheeljack said, "Just go around it. Don't waste neutralizer. It will evaporate quickly in this dry air."

Will ordered, "Humans, if you see any more of it, sing out." The bots took long steps. It was just that much harder for them to watch where they were going in this mess. The humans had eyes closer to the ground.

They progressed a lot more carefully from then on. Will asked Wheeljack, "How hard is that stuff to make? What kind of a facility are we looking for?"

"Each of the centipedes can carry approximately five liters, so such a lab could be constructed in a garage or a small shed. Handling it under field conditions is quite risky, though, as you can imagine. We are either dealing with a glitch, or someone who has access to equipment that allows him to cook it up under relatively safe conditions."

Kenoi grunted. "Stuff stinks to high heaven. You wouldn't be doing that anywhere near where people live, not if you're keeping a low profile. Unless you're in an industrial area where everything else stinks just as bad." He saw movement and snapped his rifle to his shoulder, sighting in. "Got one, in the rocks down the valley. It's facing the other way. Do you want me to take the shot?"

Will thought about it. They might attack, in which case his team had the high ground and the result would be a turkey shoot. Or they might go to ground. Again, advantage Team Good Guys. But if they had any common sense whatsoever they'd scatter, and God only knew how long it would take to round them all up. All they had to do was get the drop on somebody once. "Hold your fire. They're staying together for now. Maybe they'll lead us to the 'Con we're after."

"Roger that," the Apache sniper replied. Finding that fragger was priority one, and if he took it down, he planned to gift wrap its head to present to Sara Lennox. He knew his fellow sniper would appreciate the gesture. He slung his rifle and they kept moving, keeping the centipedes in sight but not trying to close the distance yet.

Nobody was stupid enough to discount the possibility that they were being led into a trap. They were just angry and confident enough to spring it and kick the slag out of whoever was responsible. The sniper teams took point, silent and all but invisible to the centipedes' scanners.

Kenoi looked up at the centipede stretched out on a dead limb thirty feet up, just the right height to hit one of the bots in the face. If he shot it, he would scare off the rest, but his rifle wasn't his only weapon. Apache warriors were excellent shots, true. However, it wasn't traditionally their marksmanship that struck terror into their enemies.

He worked his way around the cliff to a point just above the centipede's tree. Planning each move from here carefully, he jumped to the limb right behind it, grabbed its head so it couldn't spray acid rust on him, and made one deep cut between two armor plates on the back of its neck. He severed its main energon line and, more importantly, the cable to its processor. It dropped immediately into stasis-lock and died a second later, as if he had decapitated it.

He tied a rope around it and lowered it to the ground, then shinnied down the tree and nonchalantly carried his kill back to the others.

"Here you go, Que, one intact centipede. As far as I know it's still loaded, it never knew I was there."

The scientist found a safe place to drain its deadly payload, then filled its tanks with neutralizer in case there was any residue left in the carcass. Only then did he really examine the way it had been killed-and nearly dropped it.

Ironhide whistled admiringly. "Good clean kill. We'll just start dropping you on 'Cons."

"Them, I'd shoot," the sniper grinned. "Helluva lot more armor in the way."

Wheeljack said, "Yes, if you're Ironhide. Many of the rest of us, not so much."

Kenoi was reminded that the science bot was essentially a non-combatant forced to be a soldier by circumstances beyond anyone's control. A sniper/scout was a whole different animal, and sometimes he forgot he scared the crap out of people not part of such exclusive company. He took the time to explain, "I found it up a tree, hiding on a branch, waiting for one of you to come along the trail. Lucky I happened to see it before it realized I was there. I took the chance to neutralize it silently, without spooking the others."

Embarrassed, Wheeljack nodded, "Of course. You certainly just saved someone's life, very probably mine. Thank you, Lieutenant." He made absolutely sure the carcass was not going to leak any acid, then subspaced it.

They followed the rest of them to a large culvert that drained runoff under a roadway. For a few minutes they just took cover in the rocks and behind trees, staring at the silent concrete hole in the ground. There was no movement but that meant nothing. A determined bot with an energy source could sit perfectly still for years just waiting for something to happen, making only small internal transformations to prevent his joints from seizing.

The runoff from the culvert had cleared a channel to the stream in the valley below. With a closer look, Will could see that boulders and trees had been cleared for several yards on either side of the wash. It made a terrific kill zone-not to mention, anyone who got that far would have to advance up a straight pipe at things that sprayed acid. Will knew it was more than likely he was going to lose people here.

You weren't supposed to serve with family, to command loved ones, but that was exactly what he had to do.

Then he noticed something else and raised his binoculars again. On the other side of the roadway was a ditch and the other side of that was a steep cliff. But like any road cut, there were ledges that looked negotiable for experienced climbers like his team.

"What do you think, Hide? Would a 'Con have thought to cover those ledges?"

"Megatron or Starscream might've thought of it, but these glitches? I doubt it. Our innate defense protocols were designed to defend against other bots, not humans. Most of their rank and file never got past that."

"Okay, here's how we work this. We're gonna use the cliff to access the other end of the tunnel and clear any centipedes that are in there. If the big boy's in there, I'll bet you he comes out this end pretty damn quick when we open up on him."

There was a round of evil laughter at that. Ironhide tapped his cannon and said, "Yeah, we'll give the fragger a nice warm welcome if that happens."

The NEST team circled around and started their climb. The scouts silently eliminated two more centipedes that were keeping watch from the roadside ditch, but the things weren't climbers. One by one, they dropped into the tunnel.

That was where they found the rest of the centipedes, and opened up on them from behind. Only one of them snapped around in time to fire its acid, and one man, Purcell, paid the price for that.

They looked around the tunnel. There was no Decepticon in evidence. Some people yelled curses, sure they had been led on a wild goose chase while the 'Con made his escape with the energon he'd made from the stolen crude oil. Will raised a hand for silence and started checking around carefully. This looked to him like too good a place to conceal a hideout.

It was Graham who realized one of the concrete panels in the wall was actually made of something else.

Will activated his comms. "Hide, I think we got a bot-sized door in here, but I don't see a way to get it open."

"OK, we'll be up there in a little bit."

Will sent Kenoi and the other snipers to cover their advance, while he and Graham continued to study the panel. Graham gave it an experimental push. "I think it gave a little, Colonel."

"Yeah, it would almost have to open that way. The inner curve is smaller."

Ironhide and Wheeljack led the way, hoping that Wheeljack's sensors would detect any remaining centipedes before they got in range. Once they located one, Ironhide's guns would make short work of it. Only Chromia knew he hadn't been this scared since their first battles at the beginning of the war, and she was as close as she could be while still technically obeying his order to stay behind him.

Wheeljack painted one target. Instantly Ironhide's autocannon shredded it. That brought another out of hiding, closer to the culvert. Kenoi blew the whole first twelve inches of it away as soon as it broke cover. The rest of it writhed upright briefly, disintegrating in midair, before collapsing in a shower of rotting components. That was the last of them.

One by one the bots climbed into the tunnel. It had seemed huge until there were five of them in there. Ironhide gave the door a push. "Everybody get out from in front of the door." Using a hooked blade that he could eject if it got contaminated, he slid the door aside, staying behind it. As soon as he opened it a crack, the stench of acid rust was overpowering. The humans pulled on breathing gear and eye protection. Kenoi used a mirror to look around the door, and when he saw no threat, chanced a quick glance, then a longer look. He figured that any threat in there would be aimed at average bot height, not at a human who was knee high to one if that. "Looks clear. There's a corridor that looks like it opens up into something bigger."

Wheeljack reported, "He's producing energon as well as acid rust in there."

"Is he in there?"

"I would say so, there's a fresh energon signature that's much too strong for just the centipede drones to be producing."

Will asked, "Ready, Hide?"

"Let's roll." That tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 had been picked up by the military, and then by the Autobots from the NEST troops. From anybody, it meant do or die. This threat stopped here.

They advanced cautiously, ready for anything. There was nothing more dangerous than a trapped 'Con. The most cowardly of them were capable of going out in a blaze of glory if they had nowhere to run.

The opening was a rough cavern that had been melted out of the rock. Inside, there were two stands of chemicals and apparatus. An aisle between them was just big enough for a mech to move around without knocking things over.

Chromia asked, "Are you sure he's in here, Que?"

"He didn't get past us."

Ironhide quickly eliminated everything in the room as a possible hiding place except a huge tank in the back, that had to be lined with glass to hold acid rust. He powered up his guns. "OK, get your aft out here right now, or I'm fillin' that tank full of holes! This is the only chance you're gonna get."

A couple of seconds passed, then a much-repaired energon carbine clattered to the floor, followed quickly by the scrambling frame of the most bedraggled Decepticon they had ever seen. He was missing an optic, and practically every one of his front plates had been replaced with whatever sheet steel he could get. That was the expected result of cooking up acid rust in a makeshift lab.

The con dropped to his knees and put his servos on his head. "Don't shoot, I give up!"

"Turn out your hold!"

When he hesitated a second too long, the weapons specialist stuck a glowing cannon in his face. He squeaked and obeyed, dropping several weapons and miscellaneous equipment out of subspace.

Hide slapped shackles on him, then kicked his aft hard enough to send him sprawling. "Give me a reason not to scrap you anyway, glitch! You're the fragger that gave Sentinel that slag, aren't you? He sure as the pit didn't have that rust gun of his in his subspace hold the whole time he was in stasis lock on the moon!"

"He wanted it, I wasn't stupid enough to argue with him!"

"What's your designation anyhow?"

"N-nightrender."

Que stepped up and looked at the Decepticon as if he was something slimy in a petri dish. "I wager he wasn't the only one you supplied with weapons. In fact, you can probably tell us a lot of interesting stories about the Decepticons. While I wouldn't argue with Ironhide's right to use you for target practice any time he wanted, your usefulness might just keep you online for a while longer."

Will promised coldly, "You better listen to him, because otherwise, if Hide doesn't put you down, I will. You should've kept it between us. Dragging my wife into it was the mistake of your life."

"Anything you want!"

Ironhide growled, "Get him outta my sight."

Wheeljack grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him out into the drainage tunnel. Some of the men out there had just finished soaking Purcell's remains in neutralizer and zipping him into a body bag. Nightrender flinched away from their rifles and the murder in their eyes.

Arcee asked, "What are we supposed to do with this place? We can't let it fall into the locals' possession. The last thing we need is acid rust out there on the black market-Primus! If it isn't already!"

Wheeljack said, "I'll take care of it." He set several charges, then when they were safely on the other side of the valley, remotely triggered them. The resulting energon fire would render the acid harmless, as well as making it difficult for the Azerbaijanis to identify the lab equipment, much less reverse engineer the process. Unfortunately, it also blew out a big section of the roadway.

"I may have miscalculated," he said quietly.

Ironhide said innocently, "How were we supposed to know he left somethin' cookin' in there that blew sky high? We were lucky we got out before it went off."

Everybody happily went along with that explanation. No one asked their prisoner's opinion, and he wasn't complaining. The hike back seemed quite a bit shorter than the trip out here. Nobody really relaxed until they were out over the Indian Ocean.


	19. You're Not Down Unless You Stay Down

(Chapter 16—You're Not Down Unless You Stay Down)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2014—Diego Garcia)

_A.N.: Yes, this is 99% fluff, I admit it. :) But it was enjoyable fluff to write, and, I hope, to read. Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing, favoriting and adding to their alert lists. /A.N._

Sara grinned at Annie. "Want to see what Marines do for gym class?"

The seven-year-old nodded. Sara stretched against a park bench, then started her obstacle course run. Her lungs started protesting immediately, and six weeks in bed had left her weak. She didn't know if she could finish this first time through. But one of the spotters gave her a secretive behind-you signal. She looked back to see Annie struggling along behind her, swinging across the overhead ladder. Even though the rungs were too far apart for her, she kept going until she reached the end. The question of how she had got up there in the first place was answered when she wrapped her legs around the end post and shinnied down instead of jumping, a distance that was too great for her without instruction in how to land. She ran to catch up to Sara at the foot of the climbing wall.

"What do we do now?"

"Climb to the top. I'll jump, but you need to learn the right way to land first. You're going to climb over and then down one of the ropes on the other side. Got it?"

Annie nodded.

"Let's go!"

Sara was more careful than fast, because she was watching Annie and she wanted to demonstrate proper technique. When Annie started getting tired, Sara moved sideways to be able to catch her if she lost her grip. But handhold by handhold her determined little terrier made her way to the top. They caught their breath up there, then Annie climbed down. Once she was clear, Sara jumped and rolled to a safe stop.

Annie said, "Wow! When can I learn that?"

"You can start learning on the ground. But you'll have to get bigger and stronger before you'll be able to jump off something that high without breaking something. I do want you to learn how to roll out of a fall in case you ever have to jump off of Starry so she can transform in a hurry. Just remember if you fell off while you're going fast, it would be just like jumping off the top of there. Onto pavement instead of the bag."

"Oh! Yeouch!"

"Yeouch is right. Road rash ain't fun. That's why we wear our leathers even when it's hot, if we're horsing around. Next obstacle-the rope climb. Get up there as fast as you can, slap the top pole, then _climb _back down. Don't just slide down unless you want rope burns!"

"I know, we did this in gym class."

"OK, go!"

By the time they got to the bottom, they had attracted an audience of NEST troopers. The next obstacle was a barbed wire crawl. Sara told her, "Keep your butt down or you'll stick yourself on the wire!"

Annie giggled. This part was easy for a small kid, she had plenty of room under the barbed wire. Sara threw a few kicks at a bag while she waited for her daughter to catch up. Annie just figured she was supposed to do that too, and did the series of kicks that her dad had taught her if anybody ever tried to grab her. She didn't hold back, and those were good solid hits that equated to very effective knee and groin strikes. Sara whooped. "Good job!"

Slowing down for Annie gave her a chance to catch her breath. By the time they got to the end they were worn out, covered with mud, and grinning ear to ear. They hit the showers and dressed in the clean clothes they had brought.

After that, Annie became her exercise partner and head cheerleader while Sara worked herself back into shape. Will joined them whenever he could. They let Annie do everything except the weight machines, giving her the lightest free weights instead. Sara also started teaching her basic tumbling, and once she had it down, she and Chromia teamed up to teach their daughters how to safely dismount so Starry could transform on the run.

Chromia watched them practicing. "I wish they didn't have to learn to fight."

Sara said, "Better they should know how and never need to use it, than not know how and run into trouble. We can't watch them every minute, especially back home. What if somebody decided to kidnap Starry or rape Annie? Or hell, just shoot them both? Who knows what they might have to do before we think they're old enough to know this stuff?"

Chromia said, "I know. That's why we're teaching them. I just wish they didn't have to."

Sara nodded. "Me too, Chromia, me too."

"How are you?"

"It's slow. But I'm getting there, and who knew sparring could be so damn hot?" The night before, a sparring match with Will in the back yard had led to exercise of a different sort as soon as Annie went to bed.

Chromia laughed. "Found that out, did you?"

"Yup," Sara replied, grinning like a cat with a mouthful of yellow feathers.


	20. Reunion Part 1

(Chapter 17—Reunion Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2014—Diego Garcia, solar system)

There had been three months in a row without a single renegade Decepticon incident. Prime would have considered himself paranoid and ungrateful for the peace and quiet, if Will Lennox wasn't also "waiting for the other shoe to drop," as the NEST commander put it. They didn't know how they knew, but they both knew they were in the eye of the storm.

In the meanwhile, there were funding issues. There was keeping other units from poaching their people, since the Decepticon threat seemed mitigated if not past. There was the _Xanthium II, _nearly ready for her maiden flight.

Prime was too unsettled to recharge, though he knew he needed it. He decided that a drive out to the point would be better than lying on his berth thinking in circles. He commed Ops to let them know where he would be, and took the back way off base.

It was just after sunset, and there were still a lot of humans on the beaches near the base. They were usually in large groups, and they were well armed, but at least they were out again. Living in a prison of their own making because some terrorist _might_ do something hadn't lasted long with these people, especially after Nightrender had been captured.

Once he passed the more popular beaches, there was no one on the road except the shore patrol. The driver tapped the horn in greeting as he went by.

The road gave out onto the beach about a hundred yards from the point. Optimus transformed and walked out to the rocks. It was high tide. There was no sound but the waves and the wind and the seabirds. He found a place to sit among the rocks and watched the last of the sunset fade. The first stars already glimmered among the darkening bands of color.

He tried to sort out the reason why he was so edgy. Had he really been in the thick so long that something felt _off _when nobot was actively trying to offline him? That, he decided, was part of it. They had been a war band for so long it was going to be hard to be just a clan at peace.

That wasn't all of it, though. The Primes had always been the closest thing Cybertron had to priests, linked by lineage as they were to the original Primes. For vorns he had only been called upon to fulfill that role only to pray over the dead when they had no close relatives to do so, and occasionally to bless a spark bond. The old ceremonies had mostly gone by the wayside in the chaos of war and the disintegration of a way of life. But then he had died and stood in the presence of his ancestors. He carried the Matrix of Leadership, and that was the source of all this.

He let his optics dim as he turned his awareness to his first bonds, those to his ancestors now passed through the veil. ::I am no mystic, but I am listening. What do you want of me?::

Vague whispers and impulses focused so suddenly the real world faded around him. Once again he was in that place outside time and space where he had once waited between death and life.

He went to one knee before the mech who stood waiting for him. ::Alpha Trion.::

::Optimus. Rise, my son. You have done well, but as you have surmised, your journey is not over. The children of Earth and the children of Cybertron will soon face their greatest challenge yet. Only by acting as one will you prevail.::

::What would you have me do?::

The old Prime gave him a location on the outermost edge of the system. ::You will know when the time comes to go there. You are not the last of our line.::

::I thought as a kin-slayer I might well be.::

Alpha Trion said, ::Sentinel and Megatron chose their own destiny, as is the right of all beings. What you did was right. They are where they need to be on their journey. They are no longer of our line. It may yet be that they will choose a better path than the one that led them to ruin. That is up to them. You would have chosen a path of peace, but your destiny forced a sword into your servos. Nobot blames you for using it!::

He could only accept that. Alpha Trion's voice gentled. ::Let yourself mourn them—who Sentinel once was long ago, and who Megatron might have been. But understand that nothing you could have done would have affected the results of their own choices. Mourn, and let it go.::

::What is this threat that we face?::

::Leave that for its own time,:: Alpha Trion advised. ::You are already doing all that you can.::

The vision began to fade. ::Wait! I have so many questions.::

::You will find your answers,:: the ancient one promised.

Optimus blacked out for a moment, and when he shook it off, he was back on Diego Garcia. His internal clock and the night sky agreed that no more than a breem had passed.

He checked for what information he could find on the location that he had been given. It was nothing more than an asteroid in the Oort Cloud, and until Alpha Trion's proper time came, he had no doubt there would be nothing to be found on it.

Optimus Prime figured that at least he ought to be able to get some recharge time now. He headed back to base.

The common room was quieting down for the night, everyone was heading for their quarters or duty stations for the night. He took an energon cube to his quarters with him.

That night he dreamed of Ariel, but there was no detail of her appearance, only the warmth of their spark bond and the bright blue of her optics. Instead of the usual sense of loss when he dreamed of her and awakened alone, what he felt was hope. It wasn't belief that one day they would meet again, it was certainty.

*-T-F-Rising*

The _Xanthium II _was larger than her predecessor, designed as she was to carry both cargo and passengers, bots and humans alike. Her sleek lines echoed the shuttles which had been her inspiration, but she had her own grace as well. Built as she was of Terran materials, she depended on a force field and point-defense weaponry rather than heavy armor. She was not intended as a front line fighting vessel, but she did have ion cannons in the nose and in a rear pop-up turret. She had a small jump engine capable of a few light-years at a time. Although she would mostly be limited to short interplanetary hops, she could reach the nearer star systems, something avidly desired by various universities, who would make up many of their paying clients.

The crew for the first flight was lead by Optimus, who had insisted on going for whatever reason of his own and refused to be dissuaded. When he wouldn't listen to sense, Ironhide had been just as determined that he wasn't going alone. Wheeljack and Mikaela were not to be denied their places on the maiden voyage of the ship they had built. Mirage had volunteered for an adventure that did not seem likely to end in a free-for-all. He was actually a pretty good pilot, second only to Prime among the remaining Autobots in that regard, so they were pleased to have him along.

Ironhide kissed Chromia goodbye. She put on a brave smile, but he knew how anxious she was to be separated from him. With both Prime and Ironhide going, she pretty much had to stay so that all three Sisters could back up the Big Twins in case something unexpected happened while they were off-world.

Ironhide promised her, ::I swear to Primus, I will come back to you. I'm not goin' out there lookin' for trouble with _anybot. _I'll be careful—and this time I mean it.::

::I know. I'm not being rational.::

::Love, you've got a right not to be. I had it easy. They told me right off I was comin' home to you, and I could still feel you with me. I didn't have to keep getting up every morning for all those orns with a broken bond. I don't know how you did it.::

She kissed him again. ::Don't you know I carried your spark with mine? When I said the prayers over you, it was—the end of my world. I would've offlined myself right then and there if the echo of your spark hadn't left your coffin and attached to me. I thought I'd completely glitched until Prime and Ratchet both saw it too.:: She shuddered and held onto him with all her strength. That moment of grief and overwhelming loss had been the worst, the absolute worst thing she'd ever gone through in all her long life.

::Chromia...I'm so sorry I let that fraggin' traitor get the drop on me. I was stupid and I hurt you so bad.::

::What reason had he given anybot _not_ to trust him? The only thing I'm still mad about is I didn't get the chance to offline him myself and I couldn't have if I'd _had_ the chance. Will is still steamed about that, too, by the way. He had about six blocks of C-4 with Sentinel's name on 'em, but Prime beat him to it.::

::I'd have loved to see somebody shove a buncha C-4 up his big red aft, but I had a front row seat when Prime blew his head off. Doesn't matter which one of you stopped him as long as somebody did. He woulda kept on killin'. Once some fragger makes up their mind that offlining anybot who gets in their way is acceptable, they ain't gonna change it back.::

::Yeah. If he ever finds that revolving door they seem to've put in for us, he better watch his back when I'm in the neighborhood, or what goes around is gonna come around and _then_ some. You just be careful out there. Don't let Wheeljack blow anything up, and keep an optic on Prime. Something's up with him, I don't know what it is but I practically raised that mech. He came back—different—in a way you didn't. Like he…sees further than the rest of us do.::

::The legends about the original Primes. Some of them could see the future and what have ya. You think it's something like that?::

::Maybe. I don't know. I don't think _he_ knows. I just know he better have his optics on what's in front of him instead of off in the clouds someplace.::

::You know I'll look out for him, just like I have all these vorns.::

::I'll miss you every nanoklick you're gone.::

He held her close. ::Not as much as I'll miss you.::

*-T-F-Rising*

Mikaela checked her gear a final time before she stowed it aboard the _Xan II. _Russ had brought her weapons duffel, he handed it to her so she could secure it in her locker. They had no reason to think she would need it but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

"I wish I was going with you," he grinned.

"One of these days you will."

Russ picked her up and kissed her soundly against her locker door. "Never…leave anything…important for…one of these days."

Kaela moaned. "You could help me take some readings down in the jefferies tube."

"Oh, yeah, what kind of readings?"

"I'll think of something."

*-T-F-Rising*

Most of NEST came up to get a look around the _Xan II _before they made final preparations for takeoff. Simmons looked around at the stations, human oriented ones mixed in with areas designed to be convenient for bots. "Configurable stations?"

Wheeljack nodded. "Most functions can be assigned to any station. That's a common redundancy aboard most of our ships. If a station is damaged or someone is wounded, another station can immediately take over that job. The crew cross-trains in order to be able to cover one another's duties as well. Also, if passengers have a need to monitor some sort of experiment, or just want access to a terminal, we can configure a station to fit their requirements. On this shakedown cruise, the unused stations will be monitoring the ship's systems to a much greater degree than usual and recording data for Mikaela and myself to analyze later."

"What kind of sensors does this thing have? If we could configure it as a mobile ops platform that could really be useful."

"Right now it only has a minimal sensor package, but I'm hoping to upgrade that," Wheeljack replied. "The _Xan II_—intentionally—is not a warship. I don't mean that she's defenseless, we would never build or trust our lives to something like that. But, Seymour, the people here don't need to see any more of our warships. Not after Chicago."

Simmons nodded. "Yeah. You really need to blow the 'we come in peace' horn right now."

Sam had been examining one of the small cubicles designed for human passengers. Mikaela had been inspired by Japanese pod hotels to create those spaces. They were barely big enough for one person, or two real close friends, but they were a place to retreat for a little privacy, something that would be in short supply.

Kaela explained, "I thought passengers might feel better if they have a place to sleep where they won't have to worry about getting stepped on. You or I'd just find a good place to Velcro to a bulkhead, but I don't know how some complete stranger might act."

Mearing and Carly and the rest of the Ops team poked their heads around. Mearing said, "You could lock them in if you had to."

"I asked the NASA guys what they'd do if somebody freaked out up there. they said duct tape."

Sam asked, "Really?"

"Really."

"They're also designed as rescue pods. If something happens to the main life support, the human crew could get in here and wait for the bots to make repairs, or to get rescued. The whole pod could theoretically be moved to a rescue craft, though of course we don't have anything that could do that right now."

Little Danny fussed, getting his parents' attention. They decided to take him outside and give other people a chance to look around.

Mearing asked, "Kaela, I wanted to ask something. Does it turn into anything else?"

"The short answer is no. This isn't a smartship. It's just a machine."

"Wait...some of their ships can be people?"

"Yes, according to Wheeljack many were. There were advantages and disadvantages to that life that I admit I don't fully understand. They had several in their clan years ago, who all died on Cybertron. But...you have to understand...this is one of the most advanced planes on Earth, but as a Cybertronian's frame, it would be very weak and primitive."

Mearing said, "Sparking a new Cybertronian into it would be like letting yourself get pregnant when you knew the baby would be born with a lot of birth defects. It wouldn't be right."

"Exactly."

Simmons turned white. "Dear God. The sparklings are made of whatever Sector 7 had at the dam. After everything else I did, don't tell me I crippled those kids for life!"

Wheeljack heard the guilt and self-loathing in his voice and hastily assured him, "_No_. They were sparked from the Allspark. The difference between your technology and ours? The Allspark was an order of magnitude beyond that. I don't _begin_ to understand how, but it created true Cybertronian frames for them. They're no different from any other sparkling."

Kaela quickly moved on, hoping to get Simmons thinking about something else. "The ship is capable of some minor transformations. We can reconfigure the layout to provide individual bays for whatever our mission happens to be, or leave the hold open for cargo. Also we can move things around in the common area for efficient use of space. The same area can be work space one shift, a common area the next, and then berths during the off shift—pretty much the same principle as these pods. If we needed to carry a _lot_ of passengers, we can set up the cargo area for that."

There was a round of loud laughter from the cockpit, where Mirage was showing the NEST pilots around. Wheeljack said something about things getting broken and quickly headed that way. Kaela gave Simmons a last searching look, but then she left him to his wife.

A couple of hours later they were ready for final preparations. Kaela got into her space suit, she hoped to be able to do without it later but for now she wasn't taking chances. They gave some reporters a photo op in front of the ship, and then shut the doors. Prime and Mirage were up front, Wheeljack and Mikaela had the next stations behind the cockpit, and Ironhide had picked an out of the way station to monitor what sensors they had. He had made sure the guns were online, considering that they knew there were Decepticons out there who had never landed on Earth. In his opinion there had been too much publicity about the launch, but that couldn't be helped.

They went through a complicated checklist, and then it was time to raise ship. Prime sent a command through the hardline he had connected to the ship's computer and the engines came online. They rode a column of fire up into the clear tropical sky.

Kaela watched the atoll recede below them as acceleration shoved her back into her seat like an elephant standing on her chest. She forced air into her lungs, and her suit compressed her legs to force blood to her heart and brain. It kept her from passing out but she was sure she was going to have bruises.

She focused on her readouts, watching for any sign of trouble from the systems that she was monitoring.

Slowly the sky darkened around her. She looked up at a viewport and saw the great blue and white globe that was Mother Earth hanging like a jewel on black velvet. "Oh my God, that's beautiful," she breathed.

She hadn't realized she had spoken aloud until Wheeljack replied, "It is that."

Once they established orbit, everyone except Mirage—who took over flying the ship—had work to do. Ironhide was pretty bored. He went around with a data pad taking recordings from the unused stations for Wheeljack. Most of the time, he didn't even know what they were monitoring. Prime was doing the same thing, but he at least had enough of a science background to understand more of what Que needed him to do.

Mikaela stayed up by the ceiling, out of the bots' way, sailing around in zero-g like she was born to it, kicking around from station to station on a ship she knew like the back of her hand. She had a computer strapped to her arm which she could use when she needed a hardline connection to one of the bots' stations. Que was back in the engine room monitoring things in there.

Finally after about a joor of test after test, they agreed it would be safe to start maneuverability tests. Mikaela called for a ten minute break to attend to some human needs, and then jumped right back into her station.

Prime put the ship through the series of maneuvers that Wheeljack had designed. Knowing from the beginning that other people besides him were going to be depending on the ship doing what it was supposed to do, he had been more conscious of safety than his usual reputation would have given anyone to believe. Instead of just redlining every dial in the cabin to see what she'd do, they increased the stress in carefully calibrated increments.

There was one incident with a breaker that kept tripping, leading to a two hour delay while Wheeljack and Kaela traced that line carefully. They were yelling things back and forth from bow to stern that meant absolutely nothing to their three shipmates in English, Cybertronian or any combination of the two. They finally decided it was probably a bad breaker, replaced it, and then repeated the tests that had caused the breaker to trip in the first place. Everyone celebrated when the new one did not trip.

By then it was late and everyone had pulled a double shift. Kaela decided if the main life support had been going to fail, it would have by now. She needed a shower. She crawled into her pod, struggled out of her suit, and stuffed it in a locker under her mattress. She then pulled on her jumpsuit, grabbed her kit and kicked across the way to the tiny bathroom. After that, she warmed up something in a tube that tasted sort of roast-beefish, and went to bed immediately thereafter. She was tired enough that sleeping in a pod while leashed to a bulkhead by a strap around her waist was a perfectly acceptable arrangement. She called Russ to say goodnight from space, thankful for Cybertronian communications.

Ironhide had been talking to Chromia on and off all day, but now that they were finished for the day he took some time to reassure her that everything was going fine. If the only problem all day was a malfunctioning circuit breaker, they were doing pretty good as far as he was concerned.

That night Prime dreamed about Ariel again. It was strange, because all he really got was a sense of being cold and lost and in danger. He woke up suddenly enough to sit up straight on his berth. Ironhide was immediately awake with his cannons out. "What's wrong?"

"It was nothing, Hide, just some strange dream. I apologize for waking you."

His bodyguard shipped his guns and muttered something about no problem. "What's the matter, Prime?"

Optimus told him about the vision and the coordinates. "I checked and there was an asteroid at those coordinates at that time."

"So that's why you're out here. You coulda told me that. I've seen the Ancient Primes for myself, you know. I wouldn't exactly think you were glitched for talking about them."

Prime picked up the note of exasperation in his old friend's voice loud and clear. "It isn't just that. I've dreamed of Ariel practically every other recharge cycle since the vision."

"These dreams, or more visions?"

"How in the Pit would I know? I have never been the mystic that they seem to think I should be." Optimus rarely let his frustration show, but he had known Ironhide since he had been a mechling. It had been Ironhide who had kept him out of trouble and taught him to shoot and kept him from offlining himself when Ariel had been gone. There was never any need to pretend between the two of them.

"So I guess we check their asteroid out and find out one way or the other what their problem is," was his Guardian's practical suggestion. "Get some recharge. Que's gonna have us counting rivets again all day tomorrow."

Optimus laughed and agreed with that. He drifted back into recharge trying to make sense of the dream.

The next morning he told the rest of them what he had told Ironhide. Que and Kaela had no idea what to make of it, but they had seen him right often enough to just take his word for it. Mirage said, "From what I saw of the Six, this is unlikely to be something minor. I never got the sense of them that they interfered with the mortal realm without a good cause. Of all the Lineage, though, are there any who could be unaccounted for?"

"I believe that we know what happened to all who were called," Prime said thoughtfully. "But not everyone who was sparked with the potential to become a Prime was called. I have no idea who else may have carried the sigil. It would not have been a wise thing to advertise."

"As you say, Prime," the aristocratic scout replied.

Kaela said, "Prime, if this is none of my business…."

"Ask what you will, Kaela," Optimus encouraged.

"Wouldn't Megatron have been one of those?"

"He was indeed. That was the beginning of his rebellion. He thought himself better suited."

"Then we might not be dealing with a friend."

"We might well not."

Ironhide said, "That bears finding out, too. _All_ we need is another rogue like Megatron on the loose."

Que said, "We need to test the jump engine in Earth's orbit before we attempt to rendezvous with an asteroid, especially one at the outer edge of the Oort Cloud. But those tests shouldn't take more than another day."

That test led to the first real scare. It was a rough jump, throwing them about 100,000 kilometers away from their intended destination. Fortunately no one was hurt, but that set them back for several hours while they searched for the source of the problem.

Eventually Que found it in the computer code, a simple programming error. It took him another hour to thoroughly scan the code for any more errors. Best practice would have been for a second programmer to look over his code for errors like that—one person could stare at the same mistake over and over without catching it. There was no one else left alive who understood navigational programming well enough to check his work. He just had to hope this time he had got all the bugs out.

Que was embarrassed and apologetic for the potentially much more dangerous mishap, but everyone had been well aware of the hazards involved before they set foot on the ship in the first place. Ironhide just told him as long as they jumped into open space away from any gravity source it was no big deal. They took a break for some energon while Kaela ate an apple and sipped coffee from a pouch.

Mirage asked, "How are we doing on energy?"

Wheeljack replied, "Quite well. Without the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere reducing the amount of solar energy our hull absorbs, we've recovered much of what we've used. I want to be sure we have full reserves before we venture to the outer edge of the system, though. It would take a long time to rebuild our reserves out there."

Prime readily agreed. The last thing they wanted to do was run out of fuel and get stranded in the back of beyond waiting for the energon cubes to replenish their supply. Then he thought of something else. "If we did get stranded out there waiting to synthesize more energon, would Kaela run out of supplies?"

Kaela replied, "Not likely, I didn't bring much fresh stuff but I have enough MREs and energy bars to last at least a couple of months, I could stretch it longer than that. Triple redundancy in the recycling system, if you count the sleeping pods and my space suit, so air and water won't be a problem. I'm set for as long as this is going to take."

(Continued in Part 2)

_A.N.: Virtual cookies to everyone who caught the little Star Trek reference./A.N._


	21. Reunion Part 2

(Chapter 17—Reunion Part 2)

Prime secured the _Xan II _from jump. They could see the asteroid, the same sort of irregularly shaped rock ball as all its neighbors, no more than ten kilometers in length. But their sensors picked up a large metallic form, and the presence of energon.

Mirage spotted it first, with a scout's ability to pick out fine details. "There. It's almost hidden in that shadow."

Prime asked, "What is that, an Explorer-class scoutship?"

"It looks like it, but I've never actually seen one outside vids before," the scout replied.

Wheeljack said, "That's exactly what it is. It's definitely pre-war. Very low on energon. That's about all these scanners can tell us."

Prime ordered, "Set us down at the other end of the asteroid."

Mirage did so. As soon as they set down, he vacated his seat to join Prime and Ironhide at the airlock. Ironhide told Wheeljack and Kaela, "Keep the engine hot in case we're leavin' in a hurry."

"Right," Que replied.

Kaela said, "Let me suit up." She wasn't counting on the ship staying pressurized if things went pear-shaped.

The three mechs started out approaching the old Cybertronian scoutship carefully, but then suddenly Prime broke into a flat-out run.

"Frag it, Optimus!" Ironhide shouted. The weapons specialist had to transform to keep up, and Mirage followed suit. Running right up at an unknown position was something Ironhide would have expected from the Idiot Twins, not his battle-smart leader. And the fragging mech could cover a lot of ground in a hurry when he was of a processor to. By the time the exasperated weapons specialist and the scout reached the ship, Prime had already got the hatch open, and was kneeling beside a femme who was clearly deep in stasis-lock.

Optimus tried to send an override to awaken her, but there was so much black IC on the ship's computer that it was going to take a lot more than a Prime authorization code to get in. The bot who tried it and found his skills lacking would regret it for the rest of his short life. Whatever events she had designated to be brought out of stasis-lock, this wasn't it. This had all the indications of a scout with the intention to carry out her mission or die trying.

There was the old-fashioned method. He turned his awareness inward, to the spark bond he had thought severed forever. ::Ariel.::

Her optics lit up. ::What? _Orion?_ This doesn't look like the Well of All Sparks to me!:: Through their bond, he could feel two overriding emotions—a profound regret to have failed those counting on her success, and joy to be reunited with him, no matter if it was on the other side of the veil.

::I haven't heard that name in a long time, but yes, it's me. Feel the bond, you know it's true. I'm sorry to have to tell you, you'll have to wait a while for the afterlife. You're on some little asteroid on the edge of the Sol system.::

For a long time they held each other, having no words in any language to express their joy. Optimus linked energon and power lines with her, simple battlefield medicine for someone whose levels were so dangerously low.

She said, "So you were called! My beloved, you wear it well. What happened? Sentinel Prime told me that you had been killed when our residence block was destroyed. I never believed it, not really, but when no trace of you was ever found... He offered me a place with the scouts, and I got as far from Cybertron as I could. There was nothing for me there without you."

"I believed you dead as well. Sentinel was a lying traitor. He sold us out to the Decepticons."

"Was?"

"Was," he confirmed, then continued his explanation. "'Orion Pax' disappeared because that was when I was called as a Prime. My designation now is Optimus."

"That—no good—he convinced me that a new name would help me make a new start, and so Ariel became Elita-One." She allowed herself a moment of white hot fury for all the wasted vorns, then set it aside. There was no sense going over and over things that could never be changed.

"Elita-One, my aft. If you don't bear the sigil I'm a glitched fool."

She opened a panel, the sigil was there. "No femme has ever been called. Sentinel called it a mistake and ordered me never to tell anyone."

"I thought I was the last Prime, until now. Alpha Trion appeared to me in a vision and told me to come here. He said that I was not the last, and here you are, with the sigil. Your people need you, Elita Prime. I need you."

Elita hesitated only a moment. _Alpha Trion? _Either Primus would strike her dead for her insolence or she would rise a Prime. But the bottom line was, she trusted that her sparkmate wouldn't have asked her to take such a risk with both their lives without a good reason. She pushed herself from the travel berth gracefully in spite of her weakness and went to one knee on the deck, and accepted the call. "Let it be as Primus ordains. So speaks Elita Prime."

The Matrix of Leadership glowed bright between them. Elita felt its acceptance, and when the bright light that had surrounded them faded, she had transformed to the full battle armor of a Prime, in the black and chrome that she had earned as her signature colors rather than the light red she had worn in the old times. But her optics were still that same vibrant shade of azure that Optimus had never forgotten through all the vorns.

They walked back down to the surface of the asteroid together. "You remember Ironhide, don't you?"

"Yes, of course, my old friend."

"And this is Mirage, one of my scouts. Two finer mechs you will never find anywhere."

She made the chain of command clear by saying, "It is my honor to meet the pride of your warriors, Prime."

Ironhide and Mirage knelt to her, knights to their queen. "The honor is ours, Prime."

They went back to the _Xanthium II _slowly, giving Elita time to get her stiffened joints moving freely again. They weren't sure where to begin telling all stories of such a long separation. They went with the most important information for now. Optimus brought her up to date on the current situation, and she told him of the small colony that she had left behind.

Optimus had called ahead to let Wheeljack and Kaela know everything was all right. They were waiting when the airlock started to cycle through.

Most of the Cybertronians that Mikaela had seen already had Terran alt forms. Some of the 'Cons didn't, but they configured themselves to be as menacing as possible. Elita was clearly alien, beauty and grace tempered with strength. She looked small next to Optimus, but she still towered over Kaela.

Optimus introduced them, "Elita Prime, these are our engineers, and the designers of this ship, Wheeljack and Mikaela Banes. This is my bonded, she who was Ariel of Iacon."

Elita said, "You built this? She is beautiful. Congratulations!"

Wheeljack knelt. "Thank you, and welcome home, Prime."

Kaela had learned some Cybertronian good manners when Ratchet had been teaching Georgie. As an American, she wasn't supposed to kneel to foreign nobility. There had been a Revolutionary War about that. She bowed her head deeply, expressing respect but signifying that she was already bound to another allegiance—the one she pledged to same flag that she wore on the sleeve of her space suit. "I am honored, Prime."

Elita made use of the English language files that Optimus had given her. "The honor is mine, to meet a representative of one of our neighbor species for the first time. What are your people designated?"

"I am a human, Prime. My home world is the third planet of this system, Earth."

Elita asked, "Prime, before anything further is done, can someone see to Wayfarer? Her need is greater than mine."

Optimus asked, "She is a smartship?"

"Yes, didn't she introduce herself?"

"No, she gave me no indication that she is a sparked being."

"An overabundance of caution is no bad thing sometimes. She and I are the last of our team."

Wheeljack had already started subspacing the gear they would need, as well as two large energon containers. Kaela sealed her helmet.

Elita transmitted Wheeljack a recognition code so that Wayfarer would recognize them as friends. "If she doesn't acknowledge that code, don't approach her, let me come talk to her first," she cautioned.

"Yes, Prime." Wheeljack knew better than to provoke any seeker-kin who might wake up feeling trapped.

Elita sat on the side of a berth next to her sparkmate while Mirage tended some old damage to her right arm. The cables had been severed at one point, leaving her with no use of her servo. However, instead of replacing the cables, the healer had been forced by lack of materials to splice instead of replace them. It was a matter of a few minutes and a minor repair to replace them, giving her back the full use of it for the first time in a vorn.

A few minutes later, Wayfarer commed Elita to confirm that she had actually given Wheeljack the code.

Elita replied, ::Yes, it's safe, they're friends. And—you'll _glitch _when you find out everything that just happened!::

::What?::

::Let Wheeljack and the small being, MikaelaBanes, see to you first. Then I'll tell you everything.::

Wayfarer grumbled, but agreed. She soon decided she liked Wheeljack. She was polite to the small being, but reserved judgment for the time being. The energon was more than welcome, and so was the routine maintenance that she needed at the end of such a long flight.

Wheeljack said, ::There, that should be enough for you to jump in-system. When you're closer to the sun you'll be able to synthesize more."

::I don't have an energon cube. There were none to spare when we left the colony.::

The inventor assured her, ::We'll fix that when we get back to our ship, the _Xanthium II._ I brought a couple of extra ones with us in case something went wrong with the refiners that I built into her hull. Do you require further assistance now, or do you think we might join the others?::

::I wish to rejoin my pilot, if that would be all right.::

::Slowly at first,:: he cautioned.

A few moments later, Wayfarer landed next to the _Xan II_ and docked airlocks, one of the many specialized transformations that a smartship frame was capable of in lieu of having a traditional alt form. She requested a linkup to the _Xan II's _internal sensors to extend her awareness into the other ship. Since the _Xan II_ wasn't a smartship, she got all public areas that weren't marked secure.

She saw Elita and almost did glitch. She got hold of herself. ::Elita Prime, I am honored to pledge myself to your service.::

Elita replied formally, but their deep sibling bond carried so much more than words. ::It is my honor to accept the fealty of such a warrior and a dear sister of my cohort.::

::Live long and lead well, Elita Prime.::

Then Elita introduced her to Optimus. The smartship transmitted her respects, not bothering to try to conceal her amazement and happiness at the incredible string of coincidences leading to their reunion. He welcomed the sister of his bonded into the clan, then introduced Ironhide and Mirage.

As one of Optimus' personal cohort, along with Chromia and Ratchet, Ironhide was actually very close kin to Wayfarer as the Cybertronians reckoned such things.

Mirage was something else again. It felt like they had known each other all their lives. She had been sparked into the same caste as he, though she had once had several older siblings and had never expected to inherit a title. Still, they had much in common.

There was nothing more to keep them out on the fringes. They jumped back near the moon. Optimus took them to the wreck of the _Ark_.

If the humans who had explored it forty years ago had missed the signs of Decepticon activity, a blind man couldn't have missed it now. The flat area around the wreck site was now covered with holes and trenches where the 'Cons had dug themselves out. Wayfarer did a deep scan of the area and reported that if any of them had missed the space bridge to Earth, they had left here since then.

Ironhide snorted, "I'll bet they did—when Megs' plan fell through this is the last place they'd hang around!"

Mirage said, "Look at that one deep trench. Nobot large enough to have made that came through the space bridge, did they?"

Optimus said, "No, not at all. This loose gravel makes a difference, but doesn't that look like a driller's hole?"

Wheeljack said, "It does indeed, Prime. If it is, it would be the biggest one that I have _ever _seen."

Mirage asked, "They get _bigger_ than the one Shockwave had?"

Wheeljack said, "The one that bored the transoceanic tunnels on Kalarus was much larger, but it was quite gentle. That beast of Shockwave's was trained to be vicious from the time it was small. If the Decepticons kept this one, it would have been trained for war as well. I have no idea how it would act when left without a handler."

Elita asked, ::What's going on?::

::We were discussing whether a driller may have made that large trench. The Decepticons trained them for war.::

Elita looked at the hole with the optics of someone who had been living among the miner folk for a long while. ::It looks like it very well could be, but they would have needed to come right along behind it and shore up the tunnel, and I don't see any indication of that. But something of that size definitely seems to have been hidden under the ground here. If not a driller, I'm sure I don't know what it might have been. The rest of them seem to have buried themselves no deeper than necessary to protect themselves from solar flares. I would like to have a look down there.::

::Then let's go.::

Kaela suited up again. She was very thankful that the cutting edge suit she had was designed to be put on by herself. Most spacesuits required help getting into and out of. She called Russ and told him, "I'm about to walk on the MOON!"

"Whoa!"

"We're at the wreck site, so I don't think we'll be, y'know, taking tourist pictures or anything."

"Right. But still!"

"I'll call you again later."

"Be careful around that wreck! The 'Cons might have planted IEDs in there!"

"Roger that!" She kicked herself for not having thought of that and wondered if anyone else had. She went out in the commons. "Radio check."

Wheeljack replied, "I hear you."

"Hey, everyone, careful around the wreck—the 'Cons might have left a surprise in there."

"Sounds like something they'd do," Ironhide agreed. "Scan everything before you touch it—especially the bodies."

Wheeljack was the only one who really needed to be told that. Mikaela had heard of both the Viet Cong and the Iraqis hiding explosive devices on casualties. But a reminder didn't hurt anyone.

Optimus had seen it before and already knew what to expect, but the rest of them couldn't help being affected no matter how battle-hardened they were. Sentinel may have been a traitor, but the rest of the crew had been fellow Autobots who had given their lives believing they were serving their cause. There was a long moment of silent respect before they started studying the wreck site with an eye towards bringing back the materials that Ratchet needed.

There was a long wreckage trail from the impact site to the place where the ship had finally come to rest. Wheeljack thought they might do best to collect some of that first, and leave tearing down the main part of the wreck until after they could come back and give the crew a proper burial.

Elita made her way across the pockmarked flat land carefully, scanning as she went. Mirage saw immediately that she was a highly skilled scout and dropped easily into a backup role. Most of the holes were exactly what she thought they were, places where the 'Cons who had landed here had buried in the gravelly soil to protect themselves from solar flares.

The large trench was something else again. It sloped deeper at one end than the other, and she could see an opening of some sort down there. She tested her footing on the loose gravel and climbed down. The tunnel looked like it had been indeed made by a large driller, but it only extended a short way into the bedrock before it ended in a collapse. It didn't look like it had fallen on its own, either. Optimus joined her.

Elita said, ::Well, well. It looks like someone may have abandoned a command post here.::

Optimus said, ::It probably wouldn't have been anyone who came to Earth through Sentinel's space bridge.::

::So they still have at least one leader out there somewhere,:: she said. ::Are there any indigenous settlements on this moon?::

::No. Human technology is only now reaching the level where they could establish one,:: Prime told her.

::Then the Decepticons may well have established a base here. I take it that had they landed in meteor form, they would likely have been detected?::

::Most likely. There are areas of light coverage where a cloaked individual might land, but those are mostly far out over open ocean. They would still have had to avoid detection if they ever came to land. I think you're right that they would have stayed here.::

Getting out of the trench took a little more doing than getting into it. They looked around the surrounding mountain range. There would be plenty of places to hide a base, just within sight, considering that the 'Cons had a driller to hollow it out of solid rock for them.

::If they're here, they're maintaining radio silence.::

::They certainly know we're here. We weren't exactly being subtle,:: Optimus replied.

::That they haven't come charging out to challenge us speaks to a certain respect,:: she said. ::You are going to have to tell me some of your stories soon.::

::Time enough for that at home,:: he told her with a smile.

When they got back to the Ark, Elita took a small device from her subspace. ::Who's a good climber?::

Mikaela said into her microphone, ::That would be me, Prime. What is it and where do you want it?::

Elita gave her the grapefruit sized device and said, ::It is a transmitter. Place it anywhere up there where it will have a good view of this area. I would be very surprised if they don't come out after we've gone to see what we've been doing here.::

Optimus gave Kaela a lift up into the lower areas of the ship's structure. From there, she climbed high into the tangle of exposed beams. She found a good area to conceal the transmitter. ::Are you getting a good signal?::

Elita nodded. ::Yes, it's fine. I'm quite curious who will show an interest.::

She made her way back down until she could safely jump to Optimus' hand. Once he had lowered her to a safe spot on the shattered deck, they all went out to collect scrap from the ship to fill the _Xan II's _hold. Wheeljack soon noted that Elita had a good optic for what could be salvaged and what couldn't. "You were with salvagers, Prime?"

"Miners, but we certainly have turned salvager, and crafter as well, these past vorns. We had to strip out and reuse everything from the played-out tunnels. At least we had good ore to start with, and several bots who knew the smelting process from start to finish. Primus knows, what we couldn't make ourselves we've learned very well to do without."

"We find ourselves in a similar predicament, though this will go a long way," he replied.

In the light gravity, with all of them working together, they soon filled the hold.

They transferred all the supplies they could to Wayfarer, and made sure she had an extra energon cube so there wouldn't be a repeat of the emergency that had nearly offlined the two of them. Mirage volunteered to go back with Wayfarer and guide any of the miners who wished to join them on Earth. Elita familiarized him with Wayfarer's modifications. "Take care of her. She's been a good friend for a long time."

Mirage replied, "I'll do my best to prove worthy of her, Prime." But his optics never left the smartship's commscreen and Elita knew that promise had really been made to Wayfarer. With all the love in her spark, she said a private farewell to her sister, and wished her the best life could offer. She watched them disappear into space, and then turned back to the _Xanthium II_, towards her sparkmate. At long last, Elita Prime was homeward bound.


	22. Bring on the Wonder

(Chapter 18—Bring on the Wonder)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2014—Diego Garcia)

With her hold full of salvage from the _Ark_, the _Xanthium II _returned home to Diego Garcia. Elita took the copilot's station that Mirage had vacated. Optimus was sure that any long-range scout was a better pilot than he, but Elita knew nothing about the _Xan II. _She locked in place and asked, "What is this world like?"

"There's no way I can tell you that in a sentence or two. The environments vary from ice barrens to rain forest to huge expanses of abyssal plain deep under the sea. Even under all this atmosphere, the solar radiation is more than sufficient to produce all the energon we will ever need. There is but one sentient race, the humans, yet they are as varied as their environments. Non-sentient organics are _everywhere_, in unimaginable variety."

"I can see that you love it here."

"This world gave us shelter, and hope. A new home. Perhaps it can become that to you as well."

"Where you are, beloved, I am already home," she answered quietly, letting their bond say more than her words ever could.

Optimus had to turn his attention to landing, switching to English to radio the Diego Garcia tower for permission to land. A beacon activated at their landing pad.

He warned Elita, "There will be quite a commotion when we land. The NEST troops should keep the crowd back from the area of the landing pad, but we'll travel through them to go to our compound. What is your alt form now?"

"My primary is a standard large elint van," she replied.

"That should be fine."

There was a crowd all right. Optimus warned her about the press, that cameras would be broadcasting their landing. "We have plans to obtain things we need by trading for the use of this ship, which right now is the only heavy hauler on the planet. They only have the capacity right now to carry a few individuals up to their space station and back. It's created a lot of interest. When they see you, they'll want to know who you are. Until you have a chance to get a full briefing on the situation, it might be best to pretend not to understand their languages yet."

She nodded. She didn't want to say the wrong thing and put her ped into anything.

When they left the ship, there were hundreds of humans crowded up to the fence surrounding the landing pad. People started pointing and taking pictures when they saw her.

As Optimus had suspected, her alt form was just close enough to an Earth vehicle that it didn't attract a lot of attention on a military base, where people were accustomed to seeing all kind of strange vehicles. After the military had the chance to examine the pictures, there undoubtedly would be a lot of questions, but none Elita wouldn't be able to answer.

She looked around, amazed at the blue sky and the vast expanse of water that was the ocean. Cybertron had no standing water, and she had never before seen more than puddles and small streams on any of the other worlds she had visited. Optimus had been right about life forms everywhere, small electrical signatures turned out to be things he identified as birds, insects and crustaceans. She was fascinated but they were so small.

The sparklings had been kept out of the mob up at the residence. NEST opened the gate for them to come through and then shut it behind them to keep the crowd out. Ironhide and Wheeljack's sparklings came rushing up to them.

Elita said, ::Sparklings? Here?::

He soaked up her wonder and curiosity like warm sunlight. ::It's a long story, love. I promise, I'll explain it all as soon as the excitement settles down.::

::How many are there?::

::Seven, including these five and Flareup's two. They're very small minibots, she's extremely protective of them. I'm sure you'll meet them soon as well.::

::Flareup? One of Chromia's little twin sisters? That Flareup?::

::Yes, as a matter of fact here are all three of them.::

As soon as the formalities of her introduction to the clan had been taken care of, Elita found herself crying for joy to be reunited with Chromia and Ratchet. Chromia was crying too, it was no less miraculous than the first time to have another loved one back from the dead.

Elita was amazed by the humans, but had no problem accepting them as equals on Optimus' word. She started to pick up on differences between them, gender especially. Mikaela was female, as was the ramrod-straight gray haired one introduced as Director Charlotte Mearing. She, and the male who led the NEST troops, Colonel Lennox, understood Cybertronian culture well enough to greet her properly. She was going to have to learn their ways sooner rather than later. There was so _much_ she needed to know.

She realized that many of the humans lived here in this same building. Optimus explained silently that some of them were actually clan—Mikaela as Ratchet's apprentice, others by debt or choice. All were friends.

Finally after what seemed like hundreds of people had been introduced to her, things settled down. They closed the door to Optimus' quarters, now theirs. She savored the first cube of high-grade she'd had in a very long time, and came into her sparkmate's arms as they looked out over the sea. A spectacular tropical sunset painted the western sky, while a flock of gulls soared over the beach. "Our new home is so beautiful!"

He nodded. "Elita, I am so sorry that Cybertron is lost to us."

"I hope you say that in a sense of sorrow for what we've lost, and not out of guilt, love. That was Sentinel and Megatron's doing. You didn't start this damned war, but you did what was necessary to end it."

"Perhaps someday I will believe that. I should have been able to take you home."

"I _am_ home," she told him again, with all the conviction in her spark. "Oh, beloved, I have been so alone! To have you back—promise me that I will not awaken to find this has all been just a wonderful dream."

"It is no dream, Elita."

He led her to the berthroom, both of them as nervous as they had been at their first joining, but older and stronger and wiser now, the innocence of those days long stripped away by the losses they had endured.

Optimus found that she carried unmistakable signs of torture. She discovered the scars from the time Megatron had offlined him. In the horrors the other had weathered were the explanations for many of their nightmares.

Elita figured out that she had been in stasis lock for travel when that happened, and he had been restored to life before she wakened. That had probably saved both their lives. "Megatron did this?"

Optimus nodded. "With a little help from Starscream."

Elita said, "I suppose it was too late for him from the time Sentinel first Fell."

"You think he encouraged Megatron's rebellion?"

Elita shook her head. "Who can know for certain, now? But I remember when we were younglings. With you, he played the hero's role to the hilt. With me, he was the kindly uncle, always encouraging me to accomplish all that I could 'in spite of my limitations,' as if being a femme was some kind of limitation? Really? But Megatron-it was always about pride and power. I passed it off as that whole arrogant protector mindset, because Sentinel was Lord High Protector in his day before he ascended to the Council. It never _once_ crossed my processor that there could be something more sinister involved, but looking back knowing what I know now..."

"We were young fools and he played us like a sparkling's game."

"It was no fault of our own that we were younglings caught up in our elders' power plays. The decisions we made since are all we can lay claim to." She looked at the evidence of her sparkmate's death and shuddered. "Megatron could not lay the blame for fratricide at Sentinel's feet. Had you not brought him to account for it, I swear to Primus I'd have hunted him down myself. And as for Sentinel, wherever he ended up, he can count himself fortunate that his bill came due on your watch, not mine."

"What justice could there ever be for all that the murder they did? I am sick to my spark of killing, Elita. All that mattered was that they never harm one of my loved ones again."

There was no judgment in her, no desire to second-guess his decisions. There was a darkness in her spark that he had no doubt could have exacted a truly horrific retribution—had, for the death of her team—but that wasn't a part of herself that she happily embraced. He cursed the circumstances that had shadowed her. What she must have lived through in some isolated borderlands settlement, abandoned by the collapse of civilization.

She smiled, "Thank Primus that you have light enough for both of us."

"Don't make me out to be some kind of saint, because I am not that," he said.

She stroked his face. "I hope not, no saint could ever put up with me!"

Optimus tenderly traced a rough weld too terrifyingly near her spark casing. It spoke of desperate frontier repairs, some healer who had worked miracles out of nothing. He owed everything to that bot, whoever it was. "Who did this to you?" His voice came out a lot harsher and rougher than he had intended.

"His name is Darkmoon. He styles himself Lord Darkmoon. He's a glitch who considers himself a priest of Unicron. He has about a hundred followers who are just as glitched as he is. This was only the latest time we clashed. He's been a pain in my aft for over two hundred vorns. This..." she indicated the scars "...was the only way I could get him to release a dozen innocent miners, by offering myself as his sacrifice to the Devourer in their place. When he decided to try to kill them anyway, I felt no obligation to remain any such thing and broke my chains. He always has had a talent for escaping at the last possible instant, and that incident was no different. If you want him, you'll have to catch him before I do, and I _will _catch up to him one of these cycles."

Linked so closely, there was no hiding anything from one another. Elita had been through a horrible experience and she shied away from remembering too much detail, but it was only one horrible experience in a long lifetime of desperate frontier war. She was angry and determined to put an end to a menace at the first opportunity, but hardly traumatized.

All the same, she welcomed his protective attitude. She had been far too long alone. If circumstances had been reversed, she would have been just as offended on his behalf. From now on they would fight their battles together.

All of that could wait, and was soon forgotten as lovemaking grew more intense. Between kisses, their joining deepened, and still they sought more and more, until their sparks flared together into overload. In no hurry to disengage, they lay together for a long while as the stars came out before they drifted into recharge.

*-T-F-Rising*

In their own quarters, Ironhide settled on his side of the berth. "Hard to believe, our little Ariel turning out to be a Prime. Gonna be a good one, too."

"Thanks be to Primus. It's about time we had a femme Prime."

"I gotta wonder if the Council could have been calling femmes all this time and just didn't," he growled. "Wonder if it might've made a difference?"

"From what I've seen of Elita, _she_ might very well have made a difference. We could have used the likes of her at Iacon Ridge! But just having a femme or three there for the principle of the thing? I don't know, Hide. We're metal and energon like anyone else. Just as easy to pull the fiber over our optics. Just as proud and stubborn."

She curled up in his arms. He kissed the side of her helm and said, "Cussedness kept us going plenty of times when common sense said quit."

Chromia had to admit to the truth in that. "I have the feeling this is the start of something new."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I wish I knew."

_A.N.: Chapter title from Bring on the Wonder by Sarah McLachlan. /A.N._


	23. Finding Home Part 1

(Chapter 19—Finding Home Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2014—Diego Garcia, the Moon)

Elita came out of recharge to bright light on her face. To one accustomed to the dim light of the mines or the near-total darkness of her berth aboard Wayfarer, it was odd and disorienting. And she was alone in the berth.

For a moment, she panicked. She shuttered her optics, sending her awareness down the sparkbond in desperate fear.

Instantly, Optimus wrapped her in his presence as if catching her when she fell. A second later, he opened the door and came in from the lounge. Seeing that she was all right, he put down a couple of data pads and joined her on the berth. ::What is it, love?::

She shook her head. ::Nothing. I just wasn't sure where I was when I first woke up. I haven't been that deep in recharge in I don't know when. When you weren't here, I guess I glitched.::

::You needed the recharge, so I didn't wake you. The paperwork never ends, I was clearing some of it away before we go up to Ops.::

She looked out the window to see a group of humans down on the beach doing some sort of martial arts drills. "For something so small, they seem quite fierce," she said aloud.

"There's no 'seem' to it. They are every bit as much a warrior race as we are." He sent her a few memory-clips of some of the things he had seen humans do. His respect for the human soldiers of NEST came through loud and clear, and from the things he showed her it was well-deserved. "These are the best of their warriors, but I have seen humans who were not warriors do some incredible things when circumstances warranted."

"Ratchet wants to see me. I suppose I must need to be lectured for any number of things which I could not have avoided."

"I'll walk over there with you. Join me in Ops after he lets you go."

As soon as they went out in the hall, Elita learned the necessity of watching where she was going at all times. A four-footed workbot galloped between her peds, followed by a sparkling in some kind of Terran alt form carrying a very small human.

Prime scolded them, "Not indoors! You'll trip someone!"

Moving as one, the small human jumped to her feet as the sparkling transformed, and they bowed their heads in apology. "Yes, Prime," they chorused. The little human explained, "Scramble needs a bath! He got in glitter!"

"By all means—just be more careful in the halls."

Elita watched the two of them catch the work bot and drag him off to the wash racks. "Do I want to ask what glitter is?"

He laughed and indicated some tiny colored metallic bits on the floor. "That. The little ones glue it to their artwork. It gets everywhere. It's worse than sand because it's conductive."

"Sparklings and their playthings. That is the offspring of Colonel Lennox?"

"Yes, and Ironhide's little femme Nightstar."

"They seem to get along quite well."

"We don't understand it well, but some sort of bonds definitely form. Starry and Annie are very close. Hide treats her like one of his own. He is Will's Guardian, but you would do well just to think of them as brothers-by-choice. Chromia and Sara Lennox have become good friends as well. I don't think it would be far off the mark to consider them a cohort of their own." Not for the first time, he was troubled by the knowledge of how short a lifespan humans had. But love was never wrong, and he had never seen a more pure love than little Annabelle had for her adopted uncle. All he could do was leave it to Primus.

By then they had arrived at Medbay. The door between the human and bot sides was propped open with a fan on a chair blowing into the human side. "Watch your step, they had a busted pipe next door and we got flooded!" Mikaela yelled from a deep inside a closet where she was getting out a shop vac. Through the door, Elita could see a couple of humans busy with mops.

Elita saw what she meant, water over the hard gray substance that made up the floor was slippery. They skirted the puddle and went back to Ratchet's office. "What's going on out there?"

"Another pipe burst," Optimus explained.

"_Again?_ Fraggit. Jolt, go help Kaela." His student hurried out.

Optimus said, "Show Elita where Ops is when you've finished, would you?"

"Sure, Prime." Ratchet let him out the back way to avoid the water mess out front, then turned to Elita. "How long since you've had routine maintenance done?"

"Well, that would be complicated. Fixer is a good healer, but he didn't have much to make do with after trade broke down. I'm sure you'll find a lot of things that will upset you, but before you start flinging wrenches, understand that we did the best we could with what we had."

"When Wheeljack reported spliced motivation cables, I can read between the lines as well as anyone, Prime." He scanned her, then asked permission to do a hardline diagnostic. She opened a wrist port, already knowing what he was going to find.

"Good Primus, Ariel, I don't know how you're walking around."

"_Ariel_ would be crying in a corner somewhere. _Elita_ learned to do what she had to do," she said, with wry humor.

"I should say she did," Ratchet told her. "Well, to begin with, I don't know what you've been living on but I'm not sure it qualified as energon. I'm going to put you on an additive for at least an orn. You should start noticing a difference tomorrow or the next day, though. Take all of it. My first thought is to put you in here for a few days for a full workup, but I think you need more to make yourself at home here. Come in every day for a few breems and we'll do it a little at a time. What's bothering you the worst?"

"Knee joints," she said immediately. "Especially the right one."

"You need new bearings but I'll have to have Wheeljack fabricate them. They'll be ready tomorrow. For today, let's see if a heavier grade of grease will make it easier on you. Also, I can tighten those cables."

She lay on the table while he worked. "Elita, this isn't battle damage. What in Primus' name—?"

Elita remembered Darkmoon and his energon dagger. Her voice turned cold and emotionless. "None of that was done in Primus' name, I assure you."

Ratchet cursed under his breath the whole time he worked. Whoever Fixer was, he'd carefully buffed out scarring that would interfere with the movement of her joint, but he hadn't had replacement bearings or any way to resurface the damaged components. "What else did the fraggin' glitch do to you?"

She unlatched her chest armor. No scarring was visible from the outside, thanks to her armor reformatting itself when she had become a Prime. But the internal marks spoke for themselves. She explained about the sacrifice, in more detail than she had given Optimus. "That dagger of his is powered by dark energon, have you ever heard of it?"

"Heard of it, yes, only ever seen it in the Fallen's corpse. Did he force you to drink it?"

"He poured it in my spark chamber. I never understood how I was able to resist it, until I was called."

"Primes can only Fall by choice. I guess that's true of potential Primes as well. If I check your spark chamber, can you _not _take my head off?"

"Considering how many vorns I've known you, Ratchet, I think I can trust you."

He opened the chamber with gentle yet impersonal servos. The scarring in there was severe. "It burned off?"

"Yes. I thought I was going to die right then, but it was just one quick flash of fire. That was when he went back on the deal and I broke free."

Ratchet asked, "Does Prime know about this?"

"You know more of the details. I don't think he actually saw much. We were…preoccupied. Darkmoon would have cut out my spark and offered it to Unicron, I certainly didn't bring that up at a time like that."

"I would like to think of myself as an honorable mech, but you are braver than I am, Prime."

"I very much doubt that, old friend. That miner clan practically adopted me. Any one of them would have taken my place. That kind of courage is contagious. It was easier to be where I was than see one of them…. We all got out. That's what matters at the end of the day."

"Yes, it is." He closed all the panels. "The good news is, given enough energon to get your self-repair systems working at full efficiency, this will gradually repair itself. After short rations for vorns, and now nearly starving yourself off-line, it will take a while to regain your full strength, but you will. I'll have all your maintenance done by then."

She sat up and tested her weight on her damaged knee. "That feels much better."

"When was the last time you were really warm?"

"I suppose one Liberation Festival back when we could still splurge and heat the commons for a few joors."

"Go out on the beach for a few breems today. If you can pry that mech of yours away from his work, take him with you. Primus knows it would be the best medicine for both of you."

"Thank you, Ratchet."

"Welcome home, my little Ariel all grown up," he said, with a catch in his voice.

"I never dared hope to be back among my own clan again!"

"So _much_ we didn't dare hope, during the war," Ratchet replied with a smile. "Let's get you to Ops."

"I _am_ a scout, I rather think I could find my way next door."

"You are also our Prime's bonded, and a Prime in your own right. Get used to having an honor guard," the old medic told her.

"Oh, Primus," she laughed. "Very well then, lead on."

They went out the Medbay's back door, where a couple of NEST troopers were on guard duty. They saluted and one of them greeted her, "Good morning, Prime."

Military discipline came back immediately, even though it had been a long time since there had been any kind of a Scout Corps. She returned the salute and the greeting, then followed Ratchet along a narrow concrete path that led around the building. From the road and parking lot on the other side, it was a short distance to the administration building.

The Little Twins were on guard duty. They greeted her without the military precision, but with no less respect. Ratchet asked, "What did you do to get guard duty?"

"What makes ya think we did anything?"

Ratchet just looked at them.

Skids admitted, "We might've been practicing our cannonball move on the pier."

"Yeah, and Sunny might've been looking at the new Navy ship that came into port day before yesterday."

"And the splash might've soaked a Navy captain."

"That part was an accident."

Ratchet and Elita were still laughing when they walked into Ops. Ratchet said, "What they call a cannonball—one of them gets a running go, then the other throws him, and he kicks his target in the aft. You'd be surprised how big a bot they can knock down that way. But what you've got to know about Sunstreaker is, he's…_particular…_about his paint job."

"And I take it that a captain is a high-ranking officer…?"

Ratchet sent her very useful file of military ranks. "That's just the Americans," he told her.

On duty, Elita decided a little formality wouldn't go amiss, if only to assure the humans that she understood the concept of chain of command. "With your permission, Prime."

"Certainly. Elita Prime, here are the rest of our Ops team, they were on duty yesterday. Seymour Simmons, Shimmer, and Carla Spencer-Witwicki."

Simmons wore an exoskeleton of some sort that supported one of his legs. He bowed his head. Shimmer knelt. Carly curtseyed formally, a proper British lady being presented to royalty.

When Shimmer looked up, the expression in her optics was little short of awe. Barely more than a youngling, she had never known Ariel of Iacon, or even Elita-One. To her, she would never be anything other than Elita Prime. Elita felt like a sparkling playing some game of let's pretend. _Make me worthy of the trust she places in me, oh Lord of Light!_

Mearing stepped to the rail. "Good joor, Prime. I can show you to your office and answer your questions at your convenience."

"Thank you, Director Mearing. Optimus."

"Elita." ::If you're still being held captive at shift change, I'll rescue you then,:: he added privately.

::If I haven't been hopelessly buried under a pile of data pads, your healer has ordered us to the beach.::

Mearing made her way swiftly down the catwalk stairs and showed Elita through a bot-sized door into a hallway of offices. Each of the doors had a human sized door built into it. Mearing was obviously accustomed to working side by side with bots. She didn't walk so close that Elita had to worry about stepping on her, but at the same time she was clearly not concerned about being stepped on. "There are a few other empty offices, but I thought you might want this one. Optimus Prime is right across the hall."

Elita opened the door and waited until Mearing was inside before she went in. Her window overlooked the residence building and the beach. The room was sparsely furnished, there was just a desk and a couple of storage units for data pads and so forth. One corner of the desk had a human-sized table and chairs on it.

"Would you like to be up there?"

"Yes, thank you, Prime."

Elita didn't think just picking humans up like cybercats and setting them down places would go over very well. "What would be most comfortable—?"

"Just hold out your servo, let me step up, then lift me to the desktop, if that would be all right."

That was quickly and gracefully accomplished though Elita found she still had to favor her knees. She saw Mearing's look, and explained lightly, "Oh, it's just an old injury. Ratchet says he can fix it as soon as Wheeljack makes me some new bearings."

"Ah. I'm sure you have questions, and I must admit I have several of my own, with your permission." She remained standing until Elita sat down, then seated herself at the small table and laid the tiniest data pad that Elita had ever seen down in front of her.

"I certainly do, and I'll be happy to answer whatever I can. You are the representative of the American government here?"

"Yes, I am the Director of NEST. That is an acronym for Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers. I report directly to the President. I was formerly an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, so I do bring those skills to the mix. Colonel Lennox is the commander of the military forces here. Next up the chain of command is General Morshower at the Pentagon. What I actually _do_ is run Ops when Prime and the Colonel are in the field."

"And our status is?"

"Officially, civilian contractors. Unofficially, allies."

"It sounds…complicated."

"Very much so, Prime. There are two main factions in our political system, and they each have factions of their own. Unfortunately the first Cybertronians to make themselves publicly known were the Decepticons. We've been playing public relations catch-up ever since. And that's just within the United States. There are over two hundred other nations on Earth. While the Autobots have made every effort to remain neutral, acting only to defend Earth against the Decepticons, that didn't prove to be possible. A rogue nation was far too close to developing a nuclear weapon. The Autobots took action to destroy the facility in order to minimize loss of life on all sides. Doing so placed your people firmly in the NATO camp, however."

"I see."

"Prime, may I ask what your duties are likely to be?"

"I am a scout, so I believe my intended function would have been very similar to what yours was with the CIA, information gathering and covert operations. My experience is far more military, though. I led the defense of an isolated mining settlement, and when the jump point network fell apart, I found myself cut off there. For quite some time, we believed we were the only survivors, until my partner detected Prime's transmission. Given that, I will do whatever Prime needs me to do, whether that involves covert operations or a direct military function."

"I'm trying to understand your position within the hierarchy."

"Historically, Cybertron was ruled by the Council of Primes, led by the Magnus. Optimus Prime now holds that position, though I cannot see him actually taking the title unless other people insist on addressing him as such. Aside from being his bonded, it is my duty as a Prime to advise and assist him as he requires. If I understand your side of things correctly, it seems that I am a combination of First Lady and cabinet member. To others of my people, think of me as a priestess and a noblewoman. But, as we all are, I am _first_ an Autobot warrior.

The fact is, I am very new to this. I can only accept that the Ancient Ones know what they are doing."

"I see. Thank you, Prime."

"Tell me how my bonded has arranged the structure here."

"There are a number of teams. Red Team is Prime's own, and that consists of both sets of twins. Blue Team is Ironhide's, usually the Sisters fight with him. The scouts deploy as needed, either individually or as a team. Right now, that would be Bumblebee, Shimmer, and Georgie, with Mirage on assignment. You probably would be the best fit there?"

"I think so, if Prime sees fit."

"Lennox, of course, leads the NEST team. Ratchet heads up Med-Sci, with Jolt, First Aid and Wheeljack, and I lead Ops. Shimmer and Georgie get seconded to me quite often, so do the Big Twins."

"How many sets of twins…?"

"The Big Twins are Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Skids and Mudflap are the Little Twins. There are two sets among the sparklings as well. The Sisters—I am not going to get into that, aside from telling you that the party line is, Arcee was killed in action and a new femme carries her name in tribute. Skids and Mudflap are in the same position. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do." That was one of the first things that had been explained to her aboard the _Xan II_. She didn't even really believe it was entirely a lie. Everyone was reincarnated, after all. With the Returned it had just been a little less _random _than usual.

The political discussion took rest of the shift, but Mearing was very good at explaining the intricate power structures and complex interrelationships between the different factions. By the time Optimus came to her rescue as promised, she was up to speed on a lot of things, but happy to escape to the warm sands outside.

"Do you feel up to a short trip?"

"I think so."

They transformed and she followed him up a narrow road that ran between the jungle and the beach. Soon they left the base and entered the protected half of the island. Everywhere was brilliant color. The warm sunlight sparkled off the blue waves as far as she could see. On the other side of the road the jungle was a million shades of green.

Eventually the road ended. When Optimus transformed back to bipedal form, she followed suit, and joined him as he walked out onto a rocky point.

She saw movement and focused in on a large gray sea creature. "I do believe that is larger than we are. What is it?"

"Some sort of whale. I didn't get a good enough look at it to tell what kind. I've seen them up here before."

"It's a beautiful place."

"I come up here when I need a quiet place to think. This is where the Ancient Ones told me where to find you."

"Why did they wait so long? If I was to be called anyway, why not sooner, when I might have made a difference?"

"I don't know, love, I only know that you're here now. But I think a certain mining clan would agree with me that you did make a difference."

"I was just _there_," she said quietly. "I'm no Pit-be-damned hero. I was just lucky enough to survive. The ones who made the difference are buried out there."

_Jazz, _he thought. So many others over the course of a long bitter civil war. "I feel the same way about that. We remember them, Elita. Always."

Elita nodded. In a thousand lifetimes she doubted they could ever forget. She prayed that within the Well they knew their sacrifice had not been in vain. Because they had dared to stand against the dark, a remnant had survived. Now this place of wonder and beauty waited to shelter them. There was hope.

After a while they went back to base. They spend the evening in the commons so that Elita could get to know the rest of the clan besides Optimus Prime's cohort. Before she quite knew what was happening, she was mobbed by the tribe. They wanted to know what it was like to be a long-range scout and live in a mining colony. The kids didn't realize she heavily edited the stories she told; the adults were able to read between the lines. Eventually it was time for the little ones to turn in.

That night was the femmes' turn in the wash racks. Shimmer and Georgie appointed themselves as ladies-in-waiting and showed her where everything was.

Flareup passed around some of her home-brewed high grade. Elita sipped it carefully, home-brew was usually plonk at best. This was excellent. "Did you start with a base?"

"Yes, Prime. Aviation fuel. Sometimes I can get it from the Navy, this time they needed someone to swim down and scan a ship's hull. I don't exactly charge them for that, I'd do it for nothing. Their engineers all know I like it, though. I have some pure-sunlight energon refining now too. We think it's good, but most of the mechs don't like it. They think it hasn't got any taste."

"They'd like the stuff the miners refine. They'd never tell me what they put in it, but it has to be some sort of mineral that they have in the colony. Primus knows there were times we were out of everything _but_. It was almost black."

Chromia said, "It sounds to me like you probably don't want to _know_ what's in it."

"That crossed my processor," Elita admitted. "I definitely considered it an acquired taste." She settled into the steam jets and loosened her armor so the steam could get everywhere.

The femmes helped each other clean hard-to-reach spots. It had been so long since she'd had femme clan to bathe with. The clan-bonds settled into place—with Chromia, as though they had never been apart. They others would take time to grow as strong but she could feel their warm welcome.

She was not some pampered highborn femme and she decided that she wasn't going to be treated like one, Prime or not. She joined in, helping the others in turn.

Flareup was still new enough in her relationship with Sideswipe that the other femmes took delight in asking personal questions and offering unwelcome advice. Shimmer got some of that as well, but she got embarrassed easier than Flareup. They had more mercy on her. It was only all in fun, good only as long as everyone was laughing. And there was a lot of laughter. Elita held to the moment as though it might all get snatched away from her again, with no more warning than the last time her world had fallen apart.

(continued in Part 2)


	24. Finding Home Part 2

(Chapter 19—Finding Home Part 2)

They went to their separate quarters about eleven o'clock. The lights were dimmed in the commons and everything was quiet. She touched lightly on their bond to identify herself before she just walked into the lounge. Optimus was busy with one of his ever-present data pads, but he smiled to see her. He moved over to make room for her beside him and she settled in happily.

"Did you enjoy your evening?"

"Very much so. The miners' idea of a bath is a bucket of water and a good scrub brush. Clean is clean, they'd say."

"They are the most self-sufficient bots I've ever met," he replied. "Was it difficult to get used to living among them?"

"I didn't care where I was," she replied. "I had a job to do. That was all that mattered. The miners understand that mentality. It's how they can spend orns tearing an asteroid apart for the ore in it and then orns more getting it to market. I probably couldn't have found a better place to end up. Their cure for just about anything is find a job that needs doing. But I'll never forgive myself for blocking everything out the way I did. If I hadn't kept our bond damped we might have known Sentinel was lying to us."

"He had to get you out of the way because together we would have been a match for him. He couldn't offline you without losing me as well. No, Elita, he planned the whole thing very carefully, to get you away not only from me but from everyone who could have seen both of us. I'd almost wonder if he didn't slip us some virus to make us more likely to fall for it. At that distance the bond would have been extremely faint even if you hadn't been blocking it."

"My processor knows all that, but my spark never believed you were dead in the first place."

"I could say the same. I think we just have to accept that we got an education we needed, and let it go. What matters is now and the future."

"You're right about that," she smiled. "What is all this? Is there anything that I can help you with?"

"Possibly. These are potential customers. I need to decide which to accept and in what order."

She took a data pad and started to read. "What about these satellite launching and repair missions? There are six different proposals here for essentially the same thing. Couldn't we do all of those in one launch?"

"I think so. Some of them want to send their own people to make repairs, but I don't see why we couldn't do that."

"They'll expect a discount, I suppose, but we'd use essentially the same resources for one client as six. We'll still make a better profit this way. What are space tourists?"

"Rich people who pay to go into space. The Russians allow it to help finance their space program."

Belatedly she remembered Google. "Look at what they're willing to pay! If we have extra spaces for human passengers we need to consider this."

"I don't want to have civilians in the way until we've taken the _Xan II _out a few more times. It would be a nightmare if something went wrong with a lot of VIPs on board."

"True. It would take time to get a procedure in place for background checks and all that as well."

"We'll have to do that for the workers that our clients send, but that won't be more than two or three at a time. That's really all we can do with this tonight, but at least we have a starting point." He put the data pads away and they went to recharge.

*-T-F-Rising*

The next day Ratchet had her new knee bearings ready. "You'd do better to shut down for this. I doubt you want to know about the resurfacing I'll be doing, given your background."

"Actually, given my background, I'd rather not shut down. I don't want to wake up in here and not be sure where I am. When I'm aware of what's going on, I trust you with anything. If you put me out, you'd better have Prime in here when I wake up."

Ratchet gave her an understanding look. "Another one of those, are you? You're not the only one here who's had a tour of the Pit, Prime."

"That is not something I had _ever_ hoped to hear, but you must have all had a terrible time of it." Her optics momentarily dimmed as she concentrated, turning down the sensors in her legs to the point that she would be somewhat aware of what Ratchet was doing without feeling pain. Ordinarily that would have been overkill, but she didn't want to make Ratchet's job harder, or let anything bleed through the sparkbond to Optimus.

The procedure took most of the morning. They passed the time catching up on things that weren't horror stories. Elita was especially fascinated by the humans who had become clan. Kaela was happy to answer her questions, and had a few of her own. Wheelie and Brains were shy around her, especially Wheelie.

Elita told him, "My teammates were all cohort to me, and one of them was a former Decepticon. His designation was Kyron. He died protecting a group of younglings. I'll be the last bot to judge anyone for where they were before they came here."

"Thank you, Prime."

Ratchet finished and gave Kaela room to clean up. When they had finished, she turned her sensors back on and took a few experimental steps. "Thank you, that's perfect. When can I start sparring again?"

"Give it a few more days, Prime. You've still got a lot of self-repair processes going. You're paying the price for a few vorns of serious neglect."

"Oh, very well."

"We'll have our work cut out for us when your miner friends get here, won't we?"

"I should think so," Elita said. "There was never enough of anything to go around."

"And they _would_ be a frame type nobot else has, so I've got nothing for them on hand. At least we have time to get ready for them. Where are you going from here?"

"My office in admin, more briefings," she replied.

"I want to watch you walking and make sure you aren't going to have any more problems with that. Tomorrow we'll start on your back, if it still isn't self-repairing adequately."

"That will be welcome," she smiled. "I'm getting tired of sitting around."

"You wouldn't be an Autobot if you had sense enough to rest an injury," Ratchet told her, with severity in his voice and warmth in their clan bond.

Later that day, the surveillance camera that she had left in the _Ark _was activated. ::Optimus, there are some bots in the _Ark.::_

::Come out to Ops and we'll put the feed up on the screen. Let's see who's up there.::

::Yes, Prime.:: She came out, and Shimmer showed her where to relay the video.

There were five of them, but only one that anyone recognized, an old yellow and white mech named Brakedown. The other four were a seeker framed femme and three smaller mechs, probably still younglings. Brakedown made the others stay outside while he scanned the wreck. Over his shoulder, they could see the femme looking at their tracks.

Brakedown then found the transmitter and got his team out of there.

Elita asked, "You know that mech?"

Optimus said, "That is Brakedown. He was a neutral for many vorns before he turned up with the Decepticons. I have no idea why he allied with them but I doubt it was by choice. He once let Jazz and Mirage escape when he could have killed them. He kept his people out of the fighting here. We may be able to reach an understanding with him."

Elita said, "Let me go up there and talk to him, Prime."

"That may well be best. You have no history with them. Remember they probably have that driller."

"I'll take another scout with me, but I know how to deal with drillers if I have to," she assured him.

"Take Shimmer and Georgie."

"Do they both have cloaking mods, Prime?"

"Yes."

"Then the three of us should be fine. I doubt a driller could sense us if we were cloaked."

Kaela also volunteered to go along as the ship's engineer. The plan was to drop the scouts, then for Kaela to keep the ship in lunar orbit, out of reach of the driller.

Mearing asked, "What will be their status if they do surrender?"

Prime replied, "Peaceful citizens, I hope. If they want to stay there, let them, as long as they keep their driller under control and let us conduct our activities up there in peace. The last thing I want is an unnecessary fight with a lot of conscripts who weren't were they were of their own free will. Some of them were still younglings, we're probably dealing with a family here."

"If they aren't out to cause trouble, better to have them inside the tent pissing out. Offer them work helping build the facilities you'll need on the moon," the Director suggested.

Prime nodded. "That would probably work out very well."

Two hours later, they lifted off. This time Kaela took second seat.

They landed where they had before, long enough for Kaela to let the three bots out, then she put the _Xan II_ into orbit.

Elita deliberately kept Shimmer and Georgie away from the wreck. Enough people had been in there already. She found tracks leading away. She send on all frequencies, ::Brakedown, I am Elita Prime. I wish to parley with you on behalf of the Magnus.::

There was dead silence for a while, she was sure they were discussing their options on a tightly shielded family bond.

Then Brakedown replied, ::We'll come to you, if that's all right, Prime. Your word of honor that no harm will come to my sons.::

::As long as you keep the peace, I swear it by my name and clan that I mean no harm to any of you, but we will defend ourselves if you attack us.::

::Understood.::

A while later, they saw the five bots crossing the plain.

::Brakedown, they've got some kind of a ship up there!:: The seeker reported.

::Easy, Corona, how do you think they got here? Are their guns hot?::

::…No.::

::They were just afraid Sandy would have it for lunch, isn't that right, Prime?::

::That's right.:: Elita scanned. ::Your driller better not be hungry.::

::He isn't. There's plenty of rocks and sunshine for him. He won't bother you if you don't bother the mechlings, they've got him as tame as a worker bot. And just about as bright, but that's another story.::

::The war is over. What are your intentions now?::

Brakedown said, ::Depends on what Optimus Prime's intentions towards us are. We never really were Decepticons. They showed up, told me I had a choice, wear the purple or get offlined. Wasn't much of a choice.:: He ripped off his Decepticon badge and ground it into the gray grit. ::This is my bonded. These are my sons. I don't want trouble, but if you're looking for it, you found some.::

::I'm not looking for trouble. These two are little more than femmelings themselves. I don't want a fight any more than you do. Optimus Prime has not forgotten that you once saved the lives of two of his mechs. He offers you peace.::

Breakdown and Corona knelt, followed immediately by the three mechlings. ::On behalf of my cohort and myself, I accept.::

::We aren't like the Decepticons. We won't try to force you to wear our colors. If you want to stay neutral, that's your business. Sit down and let's talk.::

They did so. ::Don't remember an Elita Prime. Nor any femme on the Council, for that matter.::

::You can ask the Ancient Ones about that,:: she replied. ::As far as I know, I'm the first.::

::Huh,:: he said thoughtfully.

::Speaking of business, I do have an offer for you. We're going to be putting a base here. How would you like to help us build it?::

::We have a lot of tunnels inside one of the hills up there that could make a good start on your base. If you want to bring along those things that live on the planet, that'll take some work.::

::They are humans, and they get upset if you call them things. Or insects or whatever else Megatron was fond of calling them.::

::Megatron was the aft who stuck a cannon in my face and told me I was a Decepticon now,:: Brakedown said. ::If they didn't get along with him, well, that's one thing we have in common already.::

Corona spoke up. ::Our mechlings are overdue for a growth cycle. Provide for them, and we will work for you for a planetary year.::

Elita asked Optimus, and when he agreed, she said, ::Done. Let's have a look at these tunnels of yours.::

Everything was open to vacuum, but the tunnels were spacious. Elita was wary of vibrations in the rock under her peds that would indicate the driller was in the area, but it seemed quiescent for now. ::How far do these go?::

Brakedown indicated one of the mechlings. ::My sons spent more time exploring than Corona and I did.::

The youngling said, ::Starspin, Prime. The driller went a long way through the bedrock. It comes out the next valley over, and he went up a couple side seams here and there.::

::Where is he right now?::

::Hiding, probably, he got hurt the last time Shockwave made him fight,:: Brakedown explained. ::That's how the mechlings were able to steal him.::

Elita supposed that a driller was no different from any other workbot, as far as that went. They were all very loyal to their handlers, but if they were mistreated another handler could earn their trust. ::If he really obeys you, Starspin, you'll have no lack of work. Call him, then.::

Elita really wanted to see for herself if it was going to be safe to have people around that thing, but what she had said was the truth. The miners would love to have a driller operator who could control his beast working with them.

The mechling's optics dimmed as he called his "pet." A few minutes later, it came up the tunnel. Shimmer and Georgie got to their feet. Shimmer had seen the one in Chicago, from a distance, but that was nothing compared to seeing this one up close and personal. She and Georgie had to rein in the urge to ready their guns, that would definitely have caused a lot more problems than it solved.

It stopped way up the tunnel as soon it realized there were more bots up there than its handler and his family. Starspin went down the tunnel, talking to it quietly over the bond he had with it. After a little while, he persuaded it to come closer. He was between Sandy and Elita, obviously he had promised to protect it and that was exactly what he was going to do, for however long it took Elita to put him down. She walked up to the driller slowly, with open empty servos in the universal sign of peaceful intent understood from one arm of the galaxy to the other.

::Optimus, I think it is tame, though it certainly would attack if I made any false moves toward the mechling. I actually wouldn't blame it for attacking if I did something like that. He's probably the only one who ever treated it with any kindness.::

::Workbots have to be taught to be vicious. It's just _large_.::

::That is Primus' own truth.:: She tried something that she hadn't since they were younglings themselves, let him basically use her as a remote to see for himself. That was an entirely different thing now, having been on their own for so long and having learned the hard way what trust got you, so he didn't keep it up more than a few nanoklicks before releasing her. That was something they decided nobody else needed to know they could do. Elita picked up the concept of an ace in the hole and agreed completely. She could think of much better times to practice it. Optimus sent a scolding burst, he was in Ops with twenty other people around. He didn't need her sending images like that.

Elita was unrepentant. ::What do you want me to do now?::

::Get scans of that whole tunnel system, then bring those five back with you so we can have Ratchet look at them.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Scanning the tunnels was soon done, though they had to move to let the driller out. It curled up in the sun and went into recharge, as soon as Starspin finally convinced they were all safe.

Everything went fine until Sandy realized he was being left alone. Starspin ran back to him and disappeared into his cockpit. After a little while, he came back, having convinced his companion that he would be back for him. In meteor form, if necessary.

After that they took the refugee family back to Diego Garcia. On Optimus Prime's orders, Elita hovered the ship over the beach to let them, Shimmer and Georgie out. Then she took the ship back to the airstrip.

"Kaela, my alt isn't made for passengers, but if you don't mind riding outside I'll gladly give you a lift."

"Thank you, Prime. Would it be too much trouble to subspace my gear?"

"Not at all." She took that and put it in her hold.

"Where can I step?" Kaela asked, once Elita had transformed to her alt form.

"Anywhere along there is fine."

Kaela found a good place where she could hang onto an exposed brace. "OK, I'm set."

The guards opened the gate. Elita moved carefully, a little concerned that one of the flimsy human vehicles would run out in front of her. Kaela agreed that people did drive like idiots, and they didn't seem to realize the larger bots couldn't always stop on a dime. But they made it safely to NEST HQ all the same.

Ratchet had already taken charge of the refugee family by the time they got back. Elita transformed and returned Kaela's things. The mechanic headed for the showers, then to Medbay to help with the influx of new patients.

Elita went up to Ops. Ratchet was right that she didn't have her strength back yet. She was thankful that situation had been resolved peacefully.

Ratchet found that all five of the newcomers needed to be in Medbay for a while, but he said they could be questioned. Shimmer went down there to debrief them about the Decepticons who had come through the space bridge.

Elita showed her scans and vids of the tunnels. She also showed some vids of the driller. Everyone was impressed by that, especially by the young mech who had made a pet out of it. Elita realized why when they showed her some video of the one in Chicago. Some very brave or very stupid person had got Optimus' whole fight with it on video and posted it. The video had gone viral in minutes, before it could be pulled—_then_ it disappeared and the whole Internet had gone ballistic. YouTube had been patriotic enough to take the fall. They had restored it and claimed that the video had been pulled due to a mistake on their end. Watching it now, Elita was scared to death when Optimus got caught in the cables-and that was where whoever had taken the video developed some sense and took cover.

Optimus reassured her, ::I wasn't stuck there for long before the Wreckers got me down.::

::NOT THE POINT!::

::I'm sure there are a lot of things you've done that would scare the Pit out of me if I ever saw video of them, but they're all in the past and we're here, safe, now.::

When her weariness started to bleed across their bond, Optimus ended the meeting and asked Mearing to find a geologist to analyze her data. He had heard of moonquakes that lasted for five or ten minutes and he wanted to know if using the tunnels would be practical. It was one thing for a few bots to take shelter from radiation in there and just run outside whenever a quake started. It wouldn't be that simple if humans had a base in there. Then he took his sparkmate home.

"Elita?"

"I'm all right, love."

He drew her head to his shoulder. "I'm sorry I gave you a scare."

"You're right. We're here together and safe."

"You gave me a scare yourself walking up to that one."

"I wouldn't have done that if I had been less sure it looked to Starspin! He wouldn't have put himself between us if it didn't. Damn this war that makes me the stuff of younglings' nightmares."

"Give him a chance to get to know you."

"I hope they didn't have to wait too long for their upgrades." Too long a delay could cause problems integrating the components of a full-sized adult frame. At worst, the bot could be stuck for life in a youngling frame, short of a reformat, which was always a traumatic experience, the cure often being considered worse than the disease, involving moving the spark and processor to a new frame.

"Their parents were concerned, but Ratchet didn't expect any problems."

"Do you think we can trust them?"

"Cautiously, yes. Most of the Decepticons who surrendered were conscripts with no ideological loyalty to Megatron. They've been put to work in Chicago."

"They're still our people, can we leave them in the custody of aliens?"

"I've done no such thing. I've kept a close optic on them. These bots did fight as Decepticons, and although none of them took human lives they weren't blameless either. This seemed the best way to give them a chance to pay their debts and earn a new start."

"I see. How many of them are there?"

"Sixteen." He sent her a file and she took a moment to look it over. All were low-level grunts who had only fought because they feared the guns at their backs more than the ones in front of them. The last two had surrendered in Georgia. The sparklings had said they weren't involved in the horrible things that had happened in that hideout. Now they were all stripped of their weapons, and watched by the Illinois National Guard. They also had Optimus Prime's promise to know the reason why if they caused any trouble whatsoever.

"There are three more, Thundercracker, Backdraft and Icefall, who refused to go back on their oaths to Megatron even though they had every reason to believe I would offline them for it. I knew by that I could trust their word. After they gave me their oath not to try to escape or harm humans, they're being held at Edwards Air Force Base in the United States. They're the ones whose situation concerns me most, because they aren't in the public eye the way the ones in Chicago are. So far, though, they haven't been treated as anything less than prisoners of honor. Whoever is stationed at the DC base is responsible for checking on all the prisoners."

"It might be best if I take a rotation there every so often. It would prove to both the humans and the prisoners that you make this a priority."

"That would be a good idea. You need to get to know our allies in Washington, as well. The next time Mearing and Simmons go back, I'll send you with them."

She nodded. "Don't let me stay in recharge too long in the morning. I'm probably already in trouble with Ratchet."

The rich warmth of his laughter surrounded her and soaked through her like sunshine. "Most likely you are."


	25. Ten Minutes in Dallas

(Chapter —Ten Minutes in Dallas)

(Diego Garcia; Dallas, Texas—2015)

Elita threw herself into learning everything she could about Earth and their place in it. She didn't consider herself a diplomat, but that was what she quickly had to become, since it was natural for a junior Prime to serve as a diplomatic envoy. Once again, the United States was gripped by election fever, but with four years having passed since the Battle of Chicago and people being more used to them being around, the Autobots managed to stay out of this one.

That didn't mean Elita was able to avoid the Washington whirl. She was accepted more or less as a Princess or First Lady in exile, with all the romance and drama that surrounded such a person. She was surprised to find that, although the Americans had no royalty of their own, they were eager to adopt other people's.

Elita fit right in with the scouts, who were in need of an experienced leader. They became Black Team, and they began searching for the still-unaccounted-for Decepticons. With information from Nightrender, who was being held at Edwards, now able to be confirmed with Brakedown and Corona, they determined that there were still six on the loose.

Scalpel was considered the most threat to humans, an opinion that Sam fully endorsed after his experience with the minibot. He was small enough to be hiding anywhere, since it would be very easy for him to avoid energon detectors.

Stormracer was a seeker who had flown with Starscream in Chicago, but took off when her leader went down and hadn't been seen since. Given a seeker's need for the open sky, they felt sure that she was hiding in some foreign military's air force.

Deepstriker favored ocean-going alts. He probably had hit the water as soon as he landed in DC. He too had been a conscript and didn't have a history with the humans, so Optimus hoped to recruit him if they could find him.

Firefist was a former Kaon gladiator. He had tangled with Ironhide a number of times over the vorns. Quiet hadn't really been his old adversary's style. Ironhide wondered if the big mech hadn't taken a bad hit in the Mall skirmish and offlined somewhere. It was anyone's guess what else might have kept him out of sight for four years.

The other two were potentially the most frightening. Like the late and unlamented Alice, Masque and Mirror were pretenders, able to take human form. They could be hiding in plain sight anywhere. Finding them immediately became everyone's top priority as soon as Brakedown told them that they existed.

Elita spent a lot of time sifting through the Internet for leads to the missing 'Cons. All of them could use the Internet, but Elita's training dated from the early days of the war, when much of the fighting had been in cyberspace. Sifting through the massive amount of information was her specialty. Late one evening in May, she sat on the couch doing that while Optimus was reading a report on the construction of the Moonbase. The tunnels had turned out to be quite stable, but anything built inside them would be subject to damage from the quakes. As a result, they were building the base to "float" on large shock-absorbing springs, so the whole thing could move as a unit during a quake.

::Optimus, do you know a Maggie Madsen in Australia?::

::Yes, she's a computer specialist who worked with us for a while. Why, did you run across her?::

::She found one of my spiders, recognized our code, and checked to be sure it wasn't one of Soundwave's. She sends her love and gave me some leads to check out.::

::There are still Soundwave's spiders loose on the Internet? Wouldn't they have deactivated when he was offlined?::

::Not always. Independent spiders would continue to function very well as long as the computer they're based on is working. If they're backing themselves up to the cloud and restoring themselves, they could be around as long as the net is. His shadow wouldn't still be there…::

::Elita?::

::There were legends of old meisters who voluntarily left their frames and sparks to become ghosts on the web. I thought it was nonsense, just stories the old scouts liked to tell, preferably before your first night shift. Then they'd sneak back in and make weird noises and slam doors to scare the slag out of you. I mean, how could anybot live without a spark? But the humans do just _fine_ without one, don't they?::

Optimus thought about that one for a whole klick. ::The operative word there is _human.::_

::An intelligence floating loose on the web couldn't really be said to be a Cybertronian anymore, could it?::

::If you slam a door at two o'clock tomorrow morning, my first thought _won't_ be Soundwave's ghost,:: Optimus laughed.

::I never said it would.::

::Bee offlined Soundwave. I saw what was left of him myself. He was too busy conducting an execution to put himself on the Internet. At the very least you'd need a fast hardline connection, wouldn't you?::

::I don't know, Optimus, if I were glitched enough to think that was immortality—I'd already have done it. I'd have my ghost self ready and update my backup frequently. I'd just have a failsafe to broadcast an activation code when my spark went out. Then I'd move to a mainframe somewhere far away and shred every trace that could lead you to me.::

::And if you did meet such a ghost out there on the net?::

::I'd probably just think it was somebot's shadow. At least, I think that's what it would look like.::

::Could there be a danger of a ghost possessing you?::

::Optimus, that's what combat on the net _is_. After my team was killed, I cored the Decepticon scout and flew their ship into a star.::

::Jazz never told me.::

::We're assassins, love. Not many bots want to know what we do or how we do it. They want us to work in the shadows and keep the details to ourselves so they can recharge at night. But _you're_ not like that so I don't know why he didn't say anything.::

::He was Jazz around us. But on the net, or out on his own, he was Meister. I suppose he didn't want his two lives to intersect.::

Elita said, ::Meister...you didn't get that nickname from other scouts unless you were the best of the best. I only knew one other and I was just an apprentice then.::

::He was risking his life every time he went one-on-one with a Decepticon scout. He never even hinted that there was a risk.::

Elita shifted on the couch to lean into his embrace. Aloud, she said, "I probably wouldn't have either, if you didn't share every risk I take. He was a scout, it's the way we were trained then. Why worry bots who can't help you? If we'd been a little less insular, we might have been more effective. But that's all ancient history now." For better or worse, they were all simply Autobots now. Scouts had once been almost a separate subculture, like seekers or miners were, identified more by specialized modifications and programming than by frame type. No longer, and in some ways that was just as well.

"What of this spider that Maggie found?"

"I'm not sure yet. I don't think it was one of Soundwave's. Dutch has one of those and this one is different. It probably belongs to one of the pretenders. Pretenders are scouts, but they usually aren't hackers. They don't have enough onboard memory to multitask enough protective programs if they run into opposition. Their skill set leans more towards physical infiltration. This one is probably using a computer."

"What are they searching for?"

"We're not sure yet. Maggie lost the trace somewhere in Russia. We're trying to pick it up again. I've got a call out to Dutch, but it's going to his voice mail."

"Wait a minute, Dutch has one of Soundwave's web spiders? What is he doing with it?"

"Studying it. It's just code unless you run it, but it's some really interesting code," she answered, distracted by whatever esoteric search routines she had combing through the Russian underworld. "_Well_. Our pretender has brass, I'll give her that. She's skimming from the Russian mafia. I lost the money trail at a Swiss bank, and I won't be picking it up again from there."

"You're admitting a human programmer has you locked out?" He teased.

"I'm admitting I'm locked out of a Swiss bank," she replied. "Whoever wrote this code is a fraggin' genius, no matter what race they are. Excuse me for a moment, Dutch just PMed me."

Optimus said, "I know when I'm crossing somebot's line of fire. I'll leave you alone, keep me informed."

"Yes, Prime."

It quickly got around Ops that the hackers were on the hunt. An hour passed, during which time they got clearance to network Maggie in.

Eventually it was Dutch who got lucky. He found set of stolen credit card numbers, one of which had been used to pay for a shipment of electronic parts which Ratchet confirmed a pretender could use to build a substitute for a damaged subsystem. "The shipment is out on a truck right now for delivery to an address in Dallas." He pulled up a map.

Will brought along a fire team in case someone had to run interference with humans. Mearing had been going to send Sam, but when Kaela went along as the medic she sent Carly to run field ops.

They loaded up the C-130. Carly gave Sam some last-minute instructions for some medicine that Danny was taking, then an airman ran up with a question about her gear. Her training took over and she was all business.

She and Kaela ended up next to each other, Russ had saved them seats so he could sit next to Kaela. That got them teased unmercifully by the rest of the team.

The plane was crowded, but this was the one Optimus usually used. Elita and the three relatively small scouts all together weighed less than he did. There still wasn't much room for anyone to move around and Elita didn't have room to transform at all. She had most of her attention back on Diego Garcia in mission planning. The rest of them got in some recharge time while they had the chance.

They planned a route from Dyess AFB in Abilene to Dallas that would allow them to avoid the network of energon detectors. That required them to take back roads much of the time. Elita had scanned a bus as a secondary alt, she used that to be able to transport the Nest troops without attracting attention.

Lennox played driver, so she wouldn't have to bother with generating a holoform. From talking to Ironhide he knew most bots hated using secondary alts. Bots with more than one primary alt, called double-changers, had once been relatively rare. Now the miners, who all had the same digger and ore carrier alts, apparently made up a majority of the survivors of their entire race. Secondary alts were different, a mostly cosmetic transformation of a primary alt. A secondary needed to be nearly the same size and shape as the primary, but its appearance could vary creatively. Scouts were known for their ability to use secondary alts to disguise themselves, usually they were scanned as needed then the large scan file would be deleted when it was no longer useful. Secondary alts required concentration to maintain, and so did holoforms.

The five-man fire team, Kaela and Carly were all asleep. No one expected to have too much trouble grabbing one or two pretenders, not if the one Kaela had killed at Sam's college had been any indication. Will just thought it would be a good idea to have some humans along in case the pretenders started screaming that they were innocent bystanders being kidnapped by giant robots from outer space. Texans would definitely come to their assistance if they did.

Later Will was to curse ever thinking there could be such a thing as a routine mission where Decepticons were concerned.

The address they were looking for was across the Trinity River from downtown Dallas. A cluster of small businesses stood in the shadow of one of the many bridges. Beyond that, construction equipment towered over a new, much larger bridge that was taking shape.

It was the office of a small privately owned moving company. Their truck was parked beside the small warehouse. All the bots could detect faint traces of energy.

Elita said, "They're almost certainly in there, and it's both of them because I'm picking up two separate traces. Will, how do you suggest we handle this? Are there any humans inside who might be endangered?"

"I don't think so. Why don't you guys surround the building, and we'll go in. They'll run, we'll chase them, you just grab them when they come out. No muss, no fuss, no property-damage paperwork for me to fill out."

That was as quickly done as said. But then things went south. Just as Will opened the door, one of two pretty girls in delivery uniforms screamed something in Cybertronian. The other one stomped a panic button and shutters came down, separating the office from the reception area. Everything was bathed in a strange blue energy field that seemed to pass through the walls as though they didn't exist.

Will ordered, "Breach that door!"

Russ had the shotgun, he blew a door open. They found the office empty and the back door open.

At that point, something about a block away made an almighty rumbling noise. They had all heard enough buildings collapse in Chicago to know what it sounded like. And Bee was outside the door nearly frozen.

Comms were down. Will figured out it was that same paralysis ray that Shimmer had been hit with in Chicago. He cursed. "Carly, stay here with the bots. The rest of you go find out what the hell that was. Those two can't have got far."

In fact, they hadn't. He found them a block away trying to hot-wire a car. When they saw him pointing a rifle at them, they obeyed orders to get on the ground, crying hysterically and begging him not to shoot them. He cuffed them and marched them back to the others.

Carly had a look around the office and found the paralysis device. She figured out how to reverse it, then took it with her and ran outside to check on Black Team. They started to shake off the effects as Will marched his captives up the alley.

Russ led the NEST fire team to the bridge. At first, all they could see was a collapsed section, some cars whose drivers had abandoned them to run away, and a crashed school bus. Russ sent Kaela to check on the school bus and see if anyone needed medical care.

He and the others approached the edge to try to find out what had happened. Then they heard the unmistakeable sound of transformation. Kaela had her back turned so nobody ever knew exactly what happened next. She heard shooting and the explosion of a heavy shell.

By the time she got out of the bus, Russ and his team were lying scattered like broken dolls. The only movement was Firefist, who was heading toward the bus.

Mikaela watched Firefist's slow but inexorable advance on the school bus. He was a giant, thirty-five feet tall and massive. She guessed his alt form might be a construction crane or something like that.

She took two steps towards Russ' body, then a third, and bent to pick up his rifle. She switched it to single fire and raised it to her shoulder. One after another, she squeezed off explosive rounds, pausing to steady her aim after every trigger pull. Each one slammed into the giant 'Con's battle mask. Each one brought him closer. Each ponderous step shook the ruined bridge. Each shot loosened the armor plate. Firefist laughed at her and pantomimed crushing her in his fist. Mikaela never faltered. The magazine ran dry. She ejected it, found another and slammed it home. One shot more. Two. The battle mask went flying. Another shot, dead on target. The huge mech collapsed virtually at her feet, paralyzed, but still alive, several stranded cars crushed under his massive bulk. Ice water ran through her veins as she deliberately climbed his arm, walked out onto his chest plates, and emptied the magazine into his spark chamber.

She jumped six feet to the rubble-strewn off-ramp, heedless of the shock of pain up her legs, and threw the rifle down.

She walked back to Russ' side, and that was where Black Team found her when they got up there.

Elita motioned her team to see to the wrecked school bus. They did what they could to tend the children until more human authorities could arrive to reclaim their own. Elita knew there were no words, she just knelt and sheltered Mikaela with one gentle hand and kept vigil with her under the blazing Texas sun. She reported the whole thing to Optimus, no evasions, no excuses, damning herself for the loss of five good men.

::Elita, you could not have known. Find out if those two glitches knew Firefist was there.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Elita left Kaela to Carly, then turned on Will's prisoners. "I am Elita Prime. You will tell me everything you know of this. _NOW!"_

Both of them dropped to their knees, shackled hands on the pavement in front of them. "Masque, and my sister Mirror, Prime. We were just minding our own business when that man opened the door and I smelled energon. We knew there were a lot of you and we just ran."

"What was that you hit us with?"

"We stole it from Nightrender during all the confusion on the Washington Mall. It's harmless, I swear, we got caught in it several times ourselves while we were were figuring out how to counteract it. The energon cell only lasts a few minutes, then it would have just worn off on its own."

She indicated the fallen giant Decepticon. "How did he fit into this?"

Mirror stared at Firefist's corpse. "We don't know!"

Masque screamed when Elita took a step towards them. "I swear to Primus, we don't know where he came from! We haven't seen him since the space bridge. We saw our chance in all the confusion on the Washington Mall, and we just ran. Sweet holy Well, you have to believe me, we haven't had anything to do with the any of the Decepticons since!"

Will took a deliberate step between the two pretenders and Elita. "They're my prisoners, Prime. Please. Stand down." He spoke quietly, but there was steel in his tone.

Elita bowed her head in respect for that kind of courage and honor. "If they're telling the truth, they have nothing to fear."

The National Guard flooded the bridge, securing the scene, getting the passengers off the bus. The driver was beyond anyone's help. The kids surrounded Kaela, crying and thanking her for saving their lives. She hugged as many of them as she could, then watched in stunned shock as the Guard led them away.

They stood vigil over the dead until ambulances came to take them away. Only then did Mikaela break down in Carly's arms.

They were directed to a National Guard armory, where they could regroup and get Mikaela looked over by a medic. Bee took Kaela and Carly. Will climbed onto Elita's primary alt for the drive to the armory. Shimmer took the prisoners.

Elita told him, "Dutch got into the surveillance cams. It appears that the pretenders were telling the truth. Firefist was a construction crane working on that bridge. When the pulse went off, he panicked, transformed and ran. Someone in one of those cars posted cell phone video on You Tube of him running across the bridge. It looks as though that section collapsed under his weight."

Will said, "If that's how it went down, this was nobody's fault but Firefist's, Elita."

"I would not have done anything to those pretenders, Will."

"Bad situation, Prime. In the Gulf…let's just say bad situations can get a whole lot worse. An officer I respected a lot went to prison for shooting a prisoner. I wasn't there when it happened. I'm sorry for thinking you might have done anything like that."

"I was angry. Angry people do foolish things. You were perfectly right to remind me of my duty."

They pulled into the armory an the gates closed behind them.

The medic checked Kaela out, and after a while came out. "Excuse me, Colonel, ma'am. Who exactly is Banes' commanding officer?"

"I am, at present," Elita said. Mikaela was Med Team but she had been seconded to Black Team as a field medic.

"Could I speak to you for a moment, ma'am?"

"Of course." They moved off to the side. "What is it, was Mikaela injured?"

"No, ma'am, it's nothing like that. But I did give her something to make her relax. Procedure is, before we give anything to a female, we run a pregnancy test, and, well, she's expecting. I don't know if she even knows yet, but I figured if she did she wouldn't be out here in the first place."

"You're probably right."

"What I gave her is safe. She'll sleep for a few hours, and then you can take her home."

*-T-F-Rising*

Nothing was that simple. Mikaela took Russ home to his beloved North Carolina mountains, where he was laid to rest beside his father. She barely heard the old Baptist preacher's sermon in the overly air-conditioned funeral home. A man from the church sang Go Rest High on That Mountain. At the cemetery, Will placed the flag in his mother's arms. An honor guard from the VFW fired the salute. The gunshots, and the Taps played by a young ROTC bugler, echoed from the mountains. Later they gathered at a farmhouse up a hollow for the funeral supper. Afterward, while the young people gathered around Shimmer, the adults talked on the porch. Kaela tried to fix all their names and faces in her mind. These people were forever her kin now, bound by blood through the child she carried.

The matriarch of the family hugged Kaela. "You always have a home here now, girl. You and my grandbaby come home anytime."

"I'll try to come for a visit the Christmas after the baby's born," she promised. "Will talked so much about home, he told me about so many places that he wanted to show me. I want to take his baby to all those places."

One of Russ' sisters hung a flag with a gold star on it on the porch. A dog sniffed Will's hand and whined for attention. He obliged until a young boy called the dog.

They would have stayed in a motel, but Russ' family wouldn't hear of it. Will insisted he would be fine on the couch. Russ' sister gave her her bed and made herself at home on an air mattress on the floor. Flustered, Mrs. Michaels was embarrassed to have to offer Shimmer her choice between the carport and a large barn.

Shimmer listened to the wind in the trees. "I think I'll stay here in the carport, if that's OK. It's so quiet and beautiful here."

Russ' mother indicated a faded old kitchen chair beside the back porch step. "Right there is my favorite place in the whole world. When he was a little boy I can remember lots of times Russ played right here while I sat in that chair, crocheting or shelling beans or something. I'd set there and read his letters after he joined up. He loved his job, and he loved that girl in there."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Were you there when my boy died? Did he suffer?"

"No, ma'am, I wasn't there when it happened, but I was there right after. It all happened so fast, I don't think anybody even knows who shot first. He didn't suffer."

"Did you get the bastard who killed my son?"

"Kaela did. She shot him with Russ' rifle."

"Good. He can rest in peace then."

"Yes, ma,am."

"Do you need anything?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

"That's my bedroom right there. Just wake me up if you want anything."

Kaela and Russ' sister Amanda ended up crying themselves to sleep holding each other. Will sat up long into the night with the Michaels men. By the time the whiskey was gone, they'd heard enough stories of Russ' years with NEST to know they had a right to be proud of the hero their grandson, their brother, their cousin had been.

There were two other funerals before they went home, the last two had considered Diego Garcia home and left directions to have their ashes returned there.

The last ceremony was on the beach at sunset. A Navy chaplain consigned their ashes to the deep. Once again the rifles echoed, and Taps sounded for the American soldier, then a piper played The Flowers of the Forest for his SAS teammate.

Kaela went to Medbay for lack of anywhere else to go. Ratchet knelt beside her and held her, surrounded by his gentle servo. "Kaela, I am so sorry. There are no words."

"He never even got to say goodbye. I was in the bus taking care of those kids and...he was just gone, that fast."

Ratchet said, "It was their time."

"There was nothing I could do."

"You survived, Kaela. You avenged him. _You protected his child. _I know it doesn't seem like much right now, but that wasn't _nothing."_

Kaela said, "I don't know what I'd do without you, Ratchet."

"You're my apprentice. To us that's the same as a daughter. That baby will be my grandchild."

Kaela found herself surrounded by the NEST families. Everyone watched her to make sure she ate right and got enough rest. In due time, the wives threw her a baby shower. Carly brought down Danny's bassinet and things that he had outgrown. Christmas passed and there was a luau on New Year's Day, 2016. Kaela found herself sitting between Shimmer and Carly, sipping a virgin piña colada and laughing at the little twins trying to do the hula. It felt funny to be laughing, but she knew Russ would have been laughing his ass off. She felt the baby kick, and laughed and cried at the same time.

On February 5th, Russell Ryan Michaels-Banes was born. The two Russes might never have met, but the newest clansman had a large family around to assure him he would always know who his father had been.

_(A.N.: I wrote a lot of this chapter on September 11, 2011. I couldn't believe it worked out to be _this _of all chapters. To all our military, all our first responders, everyone who serves or has served, thank you from the bottom of my heart. To those who have left us, we will never forget. _

_The next chapter will be up in a few days. I'm getting slammed by real life right now, and ran out of finished chapters to post. /A.N.)_


	26. Homeland

(Chapter 21—Homeland)

(2016—Diego Garcia)

(Disclaimers in Part 1. John Lord Marbury and Col. Jesse Wieskopf, of course, are West Wing characters. They aren't mine, more's the pity. Virtual cookies to anyone who catches the little nod to my first fandom.)

Annabelle Lennox was nine years old. She and Starry were floating in the lagoon watching fish for science class. She thought it was really cool that they lived where they could take pictures of a coral reef for homework.

"Annie, look, there's a jackfish! We need a picture of that one!"

"OK!"

Ironhide watched from the beach as the kids chased the fish until they could get its picture. He was careful that they didn't go too far out. This sheltered cove was a safe place for them to explore, but he didn't want them out in the lagoon proper where they might get in the Navy's way. Not unless he went with them, and he couldn't do that and still keep an optic on the boys playing in the jungle behind him. The kids didn't care. The cove was big enough to be the tribe's private playground, especially since Will had convinced them there was pirate treasure in there somewhere. Some of them were getting too old to believe that anymore.

Shaker, John Parker, and Ironhide's son Firecracker came running out of the jungle with a tale about the world's biggest coconut crab. He wasn't surprised, this side of the island was a nature preserve. Coconut crabs were protected everywhere, but the biggest ones where people lived tended to have accidents. Or, if they aggravated somebody more ecologically-minded, they'd get taken on a little trip to this side of the island. Over here they got huge—for a coconut crab.

He asked them, "Have you lot got your science project done?"

"We still need a picture of a barracuda, but there ain't one in the cove," Shaker replied.

John said, "Mom says get one off the Internet, cause she doesn't want to sew up any aftheads that get bitten by a barracuda trying to take its picture." John Parker was had just turned eleven.

"Smart human, your mom," Ironhide said.

Firecracker asked, "Dad, is there really a Hector?"

Hector the thirty-foot hammerhead shark was a legend on Diego Garcia, but it was a legend based in truth. "There _was_, I saw a picture of him taken about thirty-five years ago. He was as long as Prime is tall. Plenty big enough to swallow any of you little squirts whole." Ironhide made a life size hologram off of an image he found on the Internet. The kids were all suitably impressed, and if it scared them off sneaking out swimming in the lagoon that was fine with him. "I don't know how long sharks live, but for all I know there could be three or four Hector Juniors out there by now. Or, maybe he wasn't even full grown when they took that picture. The humans don't even know what all might be out in the deep water."

John said, "Yeah…but wouldn't it be cool if we could go find out?"

"When you're grown up maybe you will."

*-T-F-Rising*

Halfway around the world, Charlotte Mearing stood as a legend of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office was shown in by her secretary. "Lord Marbury! It's so good to see you again!"

"Likewise, Director Mearing—or is it Simmons?"

"Mearing publicly, either in private. But why not just make it Charlotte?"

"Only if you call me John," he replied.

"Certainly, John. How have you been? Good Lord, has it been three years?"

"And then some. I haven't seen you since that inaugural ball."

"Too long. It goes by too fast anymore! May I get you something to drink?"

"Yes, the ride from the airport was a bit thirsty. Whatever you're having."

"Well, that would be just bourbon and branch water."

"My dear Charlotte, I've never understood the reason for adding water to perfectly good bourbon."

She laughed and poured it straight up. "Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?"

"Well, you're aware that the lease on the American base on Diego Garcia expires this year. Thanks to all the uproar about allowing the Chagossians to return to Diego Garcia, there's been a great deal of pressure not to renew the lease."

Mearing was very aware of that. There was a good chance the Autobots would be forced to move if the base closed, and no one really knew where they would end up. There wasn't enough room at the Washington HQ anymore. Nobody wanted to go back to Mission City, but it did have plenty of room. "Yes, I can see that's a problem for you."

"Well, #10 Downing has a solution that just might satisfy almost everyone. We can't afford a space program of our own. We'd like to trade Diego Garcia to the Autobots in return for space transportation. The Crown will recognize them as an independent nation. They gave up all hope of ever returning home to save us, Charlotte. I think offering them a homeland of their own is the least that we can do."

Charlotte had never had so much trouble controlling her emotions in a diplomatic setting. "I will convey the offer to Optimus Prime immediately."

"It comes with its own set of problems, of course. Prime will have to decide what to do about the lease and the Chagossians."

"I have every confidence," Mearing replied.

"So do I," Marbury said with a grin. He laid a file folder of paperwork from his briefcase on her desk.

After the meeting broke up, she called ahead for transportation to Diego Garcia. Her secretary, Lisa Li, found her a flight leaving Andrews in two hours.

No one had been quite sure what to do with Masque and Mirror. Black team was their best fit skill-wise, but they weren't cut out to be soldiers. Mearing had decided to try them in Ops. They had become her assistants. They were grateful that Optimus Prime had given them a chance. They had no combat programming to speak of, but they were equipped with a basic autocannon and dagger. They had asked for training so they could defend themselves and their team if things ever went badly. Ironhide taught them to shoot, just as he would have taught a youngling who had never fired a weapon before, but he had never taught a pretender to fight hand to hand. Since their frame type was essentially humanoid, he and Will decided to start them off on the same basic self-defense that NEST dependents learned. Their blades were pretty much the same type of wrist-mounted retractable dagger that Georgie and Elita had, only much smaller-but because their first alts had been a human, their joints moved much more like a human's in bipedal form as well.

They thought about trying to become double-changers and get a small motorcycle alt form, but after watching Sideswipe sparring, they got the idea to just scan roller skates. The only drawback was that they couldn't transform to a vehicle capable of carrying Mearing away from trouble, but pretenders were minibots who just didn't have the mass for that. Mearing assured them that she had been getting herself out of trouble for a long time before she'd met any Cybertronians. Their job was gathering and analyzing information, fighting only when situations required.

She did send them to combat driving school, figuring they could adapt subroutines common to all Cybertronians to driving an ordinary vehicle as soon as someone got them started. That turned out to be quite true.

The four of them ended up on an ordinary-looking jet with a bunch of congressmen and reporters on a fact-finding mission to Qatar. Some of the congressmen got really drunk. Mearing got pigeonholed at the front of the plane by one of the ranking members of the Appropriations Committee, who wanted to discuss NEST's budget. She took the aisle seat next to him so they could put notes on the tray table. Lisa, Masque and Mirror ended up in the three center seats at the very back of the plane. The only good thing about the first leg of the trip was, the congressional plane was faster than flying Space-A on whatever happened to be going their way, and they got to stretch their legs at Al Udeid. The last seven hours of the trip were on a troop transport with a lot of Marines. The seats weren't as comfortable but the company was better. It was about 0200 when they landed.

One of the Little Twins gave them a ride up to the compound. Mearing was too tired to care which one it was. He drove inside the commons before letting them out.

"Who's on duty in Ops?" she asked, her voice gravelly with exhaustion.

"Prime. I think your husband's there too."

She dropped her personal stuff on a human-size couch, knowing the only reason anyone would touch it would be to take it to her quarters if they were going that direction. She had never been anyplace before where so many people had been that at home. The place was a damn commune and it worked.

She went back into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, went up to Ops. "Prime."

"Director."

"I have news that can't wait, but it's good news."

Optimus could see that she was exhausted. He offered her a ride to his office. "Charlotte?"

"The Brits made an offer. They want to give you the island, in return for free maintenance on their satellites and transportation for their astronauts. They also will recognize Diego Garcia as an independent nation."

At first he wasn't sure that he had heard what he thought he had. "Primus."

"It's what they see as payment of a debt. Sometimes they understand the concept of honor better than anyone else does. The whole damn Commonwealth is in. The EU will follow."

"What will the US do? What of NEST?"

"Offer to continue the lease on the base here under whatever terms they have with the Brits. Then NEST's role will just be business as usual."

"How can they recognize us as a nation if we aren't even accepted as persons under their laws?"

"Prime, the people who are resisting recognizing you as persons under our laws are the same ones who want to recognize _corporations_ as persons. I did not see a single corporation out on the firing line in Chicago, but you were _all_ out there. We owe you this. I don't care what act of Congress it takes to do the right thing."

"It has been my experience that your people eventually do the right thing. Slowly, perhaps, you are as stubborn and contentious as we."

"Let me scan this for you. I did notice that the Brits have this worded in such a way as to guarantee themselves a free space program in perpetuity, you'll need to negotiate some reasonable limits on that or in a generation or two, when memory of the Decepticons has faded, they could end up making demands that crowd out paying work. They're also passing you a hot potato in the form of the Chagossians."

"We're going to need to bring in employees to work in our space program. Is there any reason that we can't give preference to Chagossians who are willing to be trained to do those jobs, along with NEST families and retirees?"

"That could work. If they can't find one person in their family willing to take a job so the whole family can come back, then they aren't very serious about returning in the first place."

"We also will need a staff for this giant nature preserve that they have created."

"Yes, that's true, isn't it?" She smiled.

"Let someone out in Ops scan those, and get some rest. You will probably be doing a lot of traveling this summer."

"Thank you, Prime." She gathered the papers, then Optimus lowered her to the floor.

*-T-F-Rising*

Hammering out the details took several weeks of shuttle diplomacy. Optimus got the idea to have Corona scan a corporate jet so that she could provide quick transportation. She was happy to do that, the Gulfstream IV best fit her size and mass. Every seeker loved and needed to fly. She was easily able to make the trip home to her family any time she had a few days, so the separations from her sparkmate weren't overly lengthy by Cybertronian standards.

The first time Corona landed at Heathrow, she let Mearing and her entourage disembark then taxied to the hangar she had been assigned to relax for a while. Once she was inside, she transformed and looked around the huge building for the energon that was supposed to be there. It was at least 100 feet tall in the center.

A British soldier explained, "We're bringing your energon up from RAF Mildenhall on a lorry, but they're delayed in traffic. I am sorry."

"Don't worry about it. If you don't mind I'll just recharge in the sun for a while. I wouldn't draw attention out back, would I?"

"I shouldn't think so, but anytime you're outdoors it's best to assume that the paparazzi are lurking about."

"Are you sure it isn't here already, just delivered to the wrong place or something? I'm sure I smell energon."

"I don't see how, I just spoke to the driver fifteen minutes ago."

"I'll see if I can't figure out where the smell's coming from." Corona soon realized the energon cubes weren't in the hangar. "Wait—who last used this hangar?"

"A diplomatic mission, but I'm not allowed to discuss it. I'm sorry."

"I suppose it's, how do you put it, over my pay grade too. Can you tell me how long since they left?"

"Yesterday."

Corona called Ops and found Elita on duty. ::Corona, Prime. I'm in a hangar at Heathrow and there was another Cybertronian in here yesterday. This human isn't allowed to tell me who was using it, but from the trace it's someone _much _larger than I am, so it practically has to be Stormracer. What do you want me to do?::

::Nothing for now. Let me find out who was using that hangar.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Elita reported the situation to Optimus, then started checking things out.

The President of the United States had been in London.

A third Air Force One had reportedly been purchased just after the Battle of Chicago.

Optimus said, "That explains who took care of Skywarp."

"Are you saying she's our agent?"

"I suspected that Jazz had agents in the Decepticon ranks, but I never wanted to know who they were. There was too much chance I'd be captured. Not even Mirage knew."

He waited for Mearing to call in. The first part of the conversation was news that the negotiations were going well. Then he asked her mildly, ::You wouldn't happen to know anything about Stormracer being Air Force One, would you?::

Mearing choked on whatever she was drinking and nearly dropped her commlink. _"What the fuck?"_

Optimus laughed. It was rare that anybody got a reaction out of Mearing. ::I have good reason to believe that she was one of Jazz' agents, but we need to handle this very delicately. If your people think I placed her there, all Pit will break loose.::

"If they don't know who she is, it will anyway. But I don't know how they _wouldn't_ know! She _must _have gone over to the Company, but why would she…?"

::I'm going to bring Elita in.::

A moment later Elita joined the conversation. ::Hello, Director.::

::Elita Prime, from a scout's perspective, if Stormracer really is a scout, why didn't she come forward and identify herself after the war? Surely Jazz gave her a recognition code or some other method of proving whose side she was really on.::

Elita said, ::I'm certain that he did. But she wouldn't be just any scout, to do something like this. Such a mission would be assigned to an expert deep-cover infiltrator. An assassin. We're necessary to every war, but we rarely have a place in polite society afterward. Front-liners look down on us as being tainted, of questionable honor. We don't always have the luxury of looking our enemy in the optics and giving them the dignity of a fair fight. She probably didn't think she had a place here, with Jazz and Mirage both dead.::

Mearing said, "That's likely, Prime. Coming in out of the cold isn't always the easiest thing. Spook is probably the kindest thing we get called. She may have simply been ashamed to face you."

::If she was, that was my responsibility,:: he replied. ::Find out what's going on here.::

"As soon as I get back to Andrews, I'll do just that," Mearing promised. "If she's one of ours, I'm going to tell her she's welcome to come home. Don't let anybody make a liar out of me."

Elita said, ::If she is one of our scouts, I will make it clear that anything said about her role in the war is just as well said about mine.:: No one would lightly question a Prime's honor. If there _were_ serious questions, better for them to be aired now under controlled conditions and resolved, when things didn't have to escalate into a duel.

*-T-F-Rising*

Sneaking around Air Force One was easier said than done. There actually were three planes that were intended to serve as Air Force One. Two of them were just that, planes. They had their own heavily fortified compound, with more guards than Fort Knox. The compound was clearly designed to keep outsiders out, not insiders in. There was a large area in front of the largest, central hangar clearly marked "NO STANDING VEHICLES." Corona said, "That's plenty big enough for a seeker of Stormracer's size to take off and land, if she didn't care who pointed out that Air Force One is supposed to need a runway."

Mirror said, "Those guards are all wearing Air Force uniforms but they have the same rifles as our NEST troops."

"They're security for her, they're not holding her prisoner," Corona agreed.

Masque said, "And did anyone else notice there are only energon detectors out here by the fence? They know how close to the buildings they can be without her setting them off every five klicks."

Lisa said, "We aren't getting in there without an army."

"Corona, call her seeker to seeker. Tell her we'd like to speak to her."

"Before I do that, please understand. Stormracer is several times my size, and if she's a scout besides, I can't take her. The best I can do is give you time to run like the Pit's on your aft. I will do that, but I cannot guarantee you enough time to escape."

"Understood. I don't think that will happen. She's on her home ground, we're coming to her. We're not a threat."

Corona sent a short-range wide-frequency broadcast. ::Corona, Wingleader Stormracer. I am outside your front gate with friends. May we speak with you?::

::You will be admitted in a moment.::

Presently the gate opened. The two humans and the two Pretenders climbed back in her cabin. Corona went exactly where the hard-eyed Air Force SFs indicated. For all their size, Seekers weren't heavily armored bots. If she made any false moves, they could blow her to scrap metal. Her passengers were just as nervous, Mearing was just very very good at controlling it.

The hangar door opened. Stormracer was in bipedal form, the hangar was just tall enough for her to stand upright in the center. She was tall enough that just standing there was enough to intimidate most people.

Mearing and the others walked out, hands and servos in plain sight.

A silver-haired bird colonel walked up to them. "Director Mearing. I'm Colonel Jesse Weiskopf, Lt. Colonel Stormracer's commanding officer."

"Lieutenant Colonel."

"That's right, she's an officer in the United States Air Force." His cold blue stare clearly asked Mearing if she had a problem with that.

Mearing asked, "Can we dial this back a few notches? We're just here to talk to the colonel, on Optimus Prime's orders. First and foremost, it is my duty to ascertain that the colonel is not being held here against her will."

Stormracer said, "I absolutely am not. I joined the Air Force of my own free will."

"Then we can discuss everything else."

Weiskopf told the SFs, "Secure the perimeter. If more of them show up, I want to know about it."

"Yes sir!" The SFs ran to obey, but Weiskopf and the rest of Stormracer's flight crew stayed. No one had any fear of being close to Stormracer, and they moved with the assurance of knowing exactly how much room the large femme needed. Mearing was used to seeing Lennox and Ironhide move like that.

Stormracer said, "It's all right, sir, they won't do anything. Let's just all calm down."

Corona transformed slowly, careful to make no sudden moves. They all sat.

Mearing said, "Prime figured it out."

"That I was Meister's agent? Or why I stayed away?"

"Both, though it was Elita Prime who knew why you stayed. She was a scout, too, before she was called."

"She was! I was surprised enough that a femme was called. But a scout?"

"Your people would welcome you home."

"With all my respect to Optimus Prime, this _is_ my home. I'm a test case for Cybertronian rights. I've applied for citizenship. I had to wait until I'd been here for five years before I could do that. The appeals process is being expedited to get it before the Supreme Court. But I—when I get leave, I'd like to come for a visit, if I may."

"Of course you may."

Weiskopf relaxed then, assured that they weren't serving an arrest warrant or anything like that. His people took their cue from him. He said, "Actually, Director Mearing, I think we might have met before. I've done some flying for our friends in Langley. I remember this green agent on a mission in Central America about thirty years ago, and a whole lot of drug smugglers where they weren't supposed to be."

"Well, Top Cat! I'll be damned, it _is_ you! I wondered what the hell happened to you. Ladies, I'd still have to shoot you if I told you what happened, but I wouldn't be here now if it weren't for this guy right here."

"Where's Ghost?"

"Diego Garcia. We got married."

"If Sidewinder was still alive, he'd owe me twenty bucks."

"I—heard about that. I'm sorry."

"That's how he would have wanted to go, doing his job, making sure his boys came home."

Mearing nodded. For a moment, the two old veterans were many years back and thousands of miles away.

"Further on up the road," somebody said softly, and there was a murmur of agreement.

They didn't stay too long, but Mearing invited Weiskopf to come along with Stormracer to Diego Garcia and catch up with Seymour.

"I'll do that," he said. "If anyone has anything to say to Racer, I'll have a few things to say to them. She served her country, just like we served ours."

"I'm with you, 'Cat. So is Elita Prime."

*-T-F-Rising*

Shortly before a treaty was signed with the British, the Americans were officially informed of what was going on. Optimus Prime readily agreed to let the lease on Diego Garcia stand unchanged.

Mearing was asked to move over to State and become the Ambassador to Diego Garcia. General Morshower became Director of NEST.

The treaty signing and the formal declaration of independence was set for August 15th, a Monday. It was a very symbolic date, the first day of the old Cybertronian Liberation Festival, held once each vorn and therefore the next one wouldn't be until 2099. Independence Day would be observed every year. Officials from all the Commonwealth countries, the other members of the UN security council, and about thirty other nations were there to ceremonially recognize the new nation. Six elders of the Chagossian people had been selected to be the first to officially return and become citizens of the new nation. At present they were a de facto monarchy, but they were going to be a constitutional monarchy, and the Chagossian elders were going to have a hand in writing that Constitution.

Stormracer was there, though as SAM30000, not Air Force One. She had brought the US delegation led by the Secretary of State.

The Secretary was turned over to Admiral Sandrington. A casual exchange of salutes between Weiskopf and Stormracer and the Admiral was captured by a lucky CNN cameraman, and got a lot of airplay because there was so much world attention on the ceremony.

She and Weiskopf had a long discussion on the flight on what she should do when she met the Primes, since she wasn't a US citizen yet she didn't know whether to kneel or what. Finally they had referred it to General Morshower's office. He had batted the ball right back into her court.

Weiskopf stretched in his seat. "I guess it's up to you to set precedent, Racer. You'll have to decide what's right."

Now as she stood on the tarmac, she saw the American flag flying over the airbase, and she knew what she was going to do.

In bipedal form, she was just over 100 feet tall, less than half her length in alt form but still very large. As such, she couldn't go into any of the buildings. Once they were out of the crowd, she gave Jesse a ride on her shoulder.

"So is this gonna be home?"

"I don't think so. What is it you say? It's a nice place to visit but I don't think I'd want to live here."

She let him down just inside the compound gate. They met the Primes in the large parking lot outside the Admin building. As if they had choreographed it, both officers snapped to attention and saluted sharply. Optimus returned it without even thinking about it after working with NEST for so long. It was just that simple.

She found the clan friendly and welcoming, but they weren't _her_ clan. The scouts immediately made her feel at home, but she wasn't part of the cohort that was Black Team. The visit was closure. She had distant kin here, she would always be welcome, and she would visit when she could. But Andrews was home. She was already an American in spirit.

*-T-F-Rising*

Finally, all the dignitaries went home. They had a couple of days to clean up after the party, then began the work of putting together a new nation. Optimus and Elita walked on the beach at sunset, watching the tribe playing in the surf under the watchful optics of Shimmer and the Sisters.

Mikaela was a small reflection of Elita as she walked along beside Flareup with her son in her arms and Wheelie rolling beside her in alt form. She was dressed all in black from head to foot, leather jeans and boots and a sleeveless shirt today. She had never worn anything but black since the funeral. (In all the years that he was to know her, she never would.) Her hair was pulled back in a severe braid, out of her way. She was carrying at least two weapons that he knew about.

There was nothing left of the fun-loving young girl that he had met such a short time ago. Kaela was a grown woman now, truly Wheelie's Warrior Goddess. Anyone who doubted that could go look at Firefist's grave—the Texans had buried him in the same cemetery where their ancestors had once buried hanged rustlers and murderers. It was a clear warning, though Optimus hoped no one was left out there to need it.

Maybe one day the child in her arms could bring light back to her life but that would not be today. In the meanwhile she had her son and her work, in that order, to give her a reason to get out of bed every morning.

Mearing and Simmons were a little way up the beach. Mearing looked both weary and satisfied. She had truly accomplished something for the ages this momentous summer, the crowning achievement of a life dedicated to serving her country, and the cause of freedom worldwide. Those were words that had become a cliche in some circles, but not in Charlotte Mearing's world.

Stormracer's case had been accepted by the Supreme Court. While the lawyers argued, she would be carrying out her duty making sure her commander in chief was as secure in the air as in the White House. Primus help anyone who ever again tried Frenzy's stunt stowing away on the President's plane.

Elita pointed out a whale out at sea. The quiet peace in their bond was balm to sparks too long at war. After everything that had happened, this land was theirs. As night fell, he broadcast another call for all the lost children of Cybertron to put away their weapons and come home to start the long rebuilding.

_(A.N. This is the end of Part 1, but not of the story. More chapters are soon to follow. /A.N.)_


	27. Interlude 2016 to 2018

(Interlude 2016-2018)

_A.N.: Two chapters today, because this one is all exposition covering the two years between the first and second parts of this story. Sam Seaborn and Jed Bartlet are West Wing characters. They're not mine. /A.N._

Two years passed in blessed peace for the Autobots. The young, handsome and wildly popular Sam Seaborn was elected President that November. Seaborn was no stranger to Washington, having served in the Bartlet administration early in his career and then served in Congress.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the INS had erred in rejecting Stormracer's application for citizenship on the grounds that she was not a person, and ordered that her application be reconsidered on her own individual merits. That decision was compared to Brown v. Board of Education for its impact on civil rights. For the second time Stormracer took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. This time instead of enlistment papers she received a citizenship certificate.

The mayor of Chicago declared the rebuilding phase completed. Though construction was still going on, there was always construction going on in Chicago. Of the sixteen ex-Decepticons who had done reparations work there, three stayed with their union and construction company. Three more joined the Army. The remaining ten moved to Diego Garcia to live there as neutrals, ordinary civilians. That day was officially considered the end of the Great War.

The Moonbase opened and quickly filled to capacity with scientists from all over the world. In addition to the _Xan II_, Corona usually carried either passengers or light cargo whenever she traveled back and forth from visiting her family. Their second ship, the _Venture, _started construction.

Will Lennox was promoted to full bird colonel. He and Sara tried for another baby and after a year of disappointment, they found out it wasn't meant to be. Sara's illness had led to complications that left her unable to have any more children. They weathered that storm together.

Sam and Carly had a daughter that they named Alanna, in memory of Carly's late brother Allan.

Mikaela completed her Master's Degree in Aeronautical Engineering, and soon after finished her apprenticeship and took her vows as a journeyman healer. She and Ratchet were both more emotional than anyone had ever seen them when he presented her with a very small healer's badge which Wheeljack had fashioned into a pendant. Russ was walking and starting to put two or three words together. Starry and Annie often were his babysitters.

Diego Garcia was admitted to the United Nations, with Flareup as their ambassador. They obviously didn't have enough people to send embassies all over the world, so she was more or less Optimus Prime's Secretary of State and handled all such duties from her New York office, traveling where she was needed. Sideswipe suddenly found New York very interesting and visited her there every chance he got. Corona and _Xan II_ made trips home much less of an ordeal than traveling Space-A on the C-130s had been.

A near-disaster in the form of a large asteroid on a collision course for Earth was avoided when the sensors they had placed in the outer solar system detected it in plenty of time. The Autobots and an army of human construction workers built massive engines on it and put it in a stable geosynchronous orbit over Diego Garcia. The new moonlet was named Mjolnir. It turned out to be a rich source of rare minerals that the Cybertronians needed. That was the beginning of Diego Garcia Highport, although no one realized at the time that it would grow as it eventually did in years to come.


	28. Long Long Journey Part 1

(Chapter 22—Long Long Journey Part 1)

(disclaimers in chapter 1)

(2018)

(Diego Garcia, Alaska)

June was the beginning of the monsoon season, and it rained every day on Diego Garcia. Georgie stopped inside the Admin building entrance to dry off before she went to Ops to start her shift. Dripping water around all the equipment in there wouldn't be smart.

Sunny logged out when he saw her. "It's all yours. I'm out of here before I offline from boredom."

Georgie muttered something about having learned to appreciate boredom. "At least I'm in out of the rain. It's coming down in buckets out there." She hardlined to the console to log in, then synched a channel to her board so she could monitor her station without needing to sit in front of it.

Sunny cursed, he hated wet weather. All the front-liners did. Too many repairs left too many little spots for rainwater to get under their armor. Most of them weren't as concerned about their looks as Sunstreaker was, though. If he wasn't low on energon, he would have stayed to aggravate Georgie instead of going out in it.

The team leaders came out after their morning meeting in Prime's office. Georgie gave Simmons a lift to the catwalk so he wouldn't have to bother with the stairs. The wet weather was a nuisance for everyone, but it really gave him a rough time with his bad leg. She would have offered Mearing the same courtesy, but she and Elita were already deep in discussion at the other end of the catwalk.

An alert caught her attention. She turned back to her station and hardlined in to see the data faster. "Prime, I'm picking up two incoming signals."

"Put it on the main screen."

She obeyed. It was definitely two protoforms in space travel mode, but the signals weren't strong enough to be adults.

"Plot their trajectory."

Depending on where they started their insertion burn, they were going to land on one side or the other of the border between Alaska and Canada, north of the Arctic Circle.

There would be no time to waste finding them. A couple of younglings, low on energon, probably injured from a rough landing, would have difficulty surviving Arctic conditions for long. Elita reported to Optimus then scrambled Black Team. Jolt joined them on the flight line as they gathered aboard the _Xan II_. Red team would follow shortly aboard the newly completed _Venture._

By the time they reached Canadian airspace, they were getting a feed from NORAD, and rescue flights from both the US and Canada were assisting in the search. The younglings got separated when one of them started his reentry burn a little late and landed in the mountains. The other one went in further north, they prayed he hadn't gone in the water. Optimus and his front-liners were more resistant to cold so they went after him, leaving the scouts with their better data analysis abilities to find the one who landed in the mountains.

Shimmer took the rear turret to augment her vision with the gunsight. She caught a flash of bright blue and silver. ::There, in the rocks.::

The bot wasn't moving, and they could see that he had hit hard. There was nowhere to land. Her team jumped out, and Elita took the ship a few kilometers away to find a place to set down.

Georgie and Bee got there first. Bee linked energon lines with the mechling, replacing the significant amount that stained the rocks and snow. Georgie said, "We better not move him till Jolt gets here."

"Hard…impact," Bee agreed. One big energon leak could offline you fast, but so could small ones if there were enough of them, and who knew what else was damaged. A youngling wasn't made to withstand that kind of punishment.

The mechling started to come around. Shimmer eased her servo around his helm. "Don't move, kid. You'll be OK. We got you."

"Hot Rod-where's Hot Rod? He was with me!"

"You got separated, Optimus Prime is getting him right now."

"It was his signal we followed from Cassidor."

"Are there any more coming?"

The mechling's optics dimmed. "No," he whispered. "'Cons hit us. So many of them...everywhere at once. One of them-my sister-my dad picked up a pipe cutter, don't know how many he offlined. But then a whole bunch of them came up the stairs at once. He pushed Hot Rod and me into the skiff and shoved it off. The last I saw he charged right into the middle of them, yelling and swinging the cutter. I don't know what he did but the whole place blew."

Bee commed, ::Jolt! Get your aft up here!::

The smaller mech climbed the last few hundred meters with reckless haste, spurred by Bee's urgency. He got the mechling's armor out of the way, making the most urgent repairs as quickly as he could, simply shut down the energon supply to his arms and legs to stop the loss. "Damn, he didn't have enough to begin with. Georgie, get a line going and just pump it in, as fast as you can."

She quickly did so. Jolt got the youngling stabilized as Elita arrived. She carried him back to the _Xan II_. ::Optimus, we have this one, but I don't know if he's going to make it. He hit the rocks really bad and cracked just about everything. He did say the other mechling's designation is Hot Rod.::

::Get him back home.::

::Yes, Prime.::

A few seconds later a massive sonic boom sounded as the _Xan II _went ballistic. As soon as the burn stopped, Jolt contacted Ratchet. "I've got a mechling approximately .2 vorn, multiple impact injuries. He was briefly oriented but is now unresponsive.:: With that he transmitted a scan of the mechling's injuries and worked desperately to keep him from offlining before they could get him to the Medbay.

Red Team found the other mechling by the huge ditch he had plowed in the ice when he went in, but they were having trouble getting to him. He had fallen into a crevasse.

Prime shined a work light down there. Its actinic blue-white beam picked out red and gold armor under a lot of ice that had gone down with him. "To Pit with this! Sides, bring that big roll of cable and get ready to throw it down after me!" He got clear of the kid and jumped down, dragging his unactivated sword through the ice to slow his fall. Once he got to the bottom, he activated the energon sword to burn through the ice in his way. Once he got too close to the mechling to do that safely, he threw the rest of the ice out of the way, using his cestus claws to carefully break it up when he had to.

Sides called, "Looks like he bounced off the walls to break his fall."

"I think the cold put him in stasis lock when he ran low on energon. Let me give him some and see if that brings him around."

The kid came awake all at once and came up fighting like a little wildcat. Optimus had to pin him for both their safety. "Hot Rod, stand down!"

Prime's commanding tone cut through the mechling's confusion and panic. The mechling stopped fighting and tried to get oriented.

"How are you feeling?"

"Cold..._Prime! _I'm sorry!"

"Don't worry about it."

"Where's Bluestreak?"

"Halfway back to our base by now, and that's where you're going as soon as we get you topside."

There was an ominous creak above them. An overhang broke loose. Prime took the impact on his shield and let most of it slide off behind him. Even so they both got pelted by a lot of smaller pieces that hit the sides of the crevasse and ricocheted every which way.

"Prime!" Sides shouted.

"We're all right! Drop me that line!"

Sideswipe did so. Prime secured the cable around the mechling, and once his team had pulled Hot Rod out, he climbed out. They got the kid aboard the _Venture_ and cranked the heat up full blast. Rather than just having the kid drink energon, they gave it to him through a line link, so it was already scalding hot. That was the best treatment for hypothermia.

First Aid ran a diagnostic scan. "You'll be fine as soon as you thaw out."

Optimus asked, "What happened?"

"Bluestreak and I are from a gas collection colony on Cassidor. We got hit by a gang of 'Cons. I was working with my master and some journeymen on the lower deck when they crashed right into the catwalks and came pouring over the rails. I don't know how many of them. My master ordered me to get the other younglings, Bluestreak and his sister, on a skiff. I caught some of the 'Cons, they'd ripped poor old Cirrus to pieces. He'd got a couple of them first. I grabbed somebot's sword and offlined a couple of them, kicked another one over the rail. But by the time I fought my way up the stairs, Firebright was already dead, and so was her mother. Bluestreak's dad—sweet Primus, I don't know how many of them he killed with just this old pipe cutter but there was energon everywhere. He shoved me, and Bluestreak and I both fell into the skiff. Before we could do anything, he launched the skiff, then he set the energon on fire, and the whole place blew to the Pit and gone. The skiff got us out to the black before it quit, and we landed on one of the moons to try to figure out what we were supposed to do next. We picked up a beacon and—it was yours, Prime?"

"That's right."

"I guess that's all there is to tell. Is Bluestreak OK? He won't answer comms."

First Aid told him, "He landed hard, but they just took him into Medbay. He's got the best medic in the business working on him. You'd better recharge on the flight."

Hot Rod had sense enough to know if he didn't do as he was told, the medic would put him out. He set an override to wake him when they stopped moving.

Prime shook his head. The mechlings had come through as bad as it got, their whole clan cut down right in front of them. He hoped Bluestreak survived, for both their sakes.

*-T-F-Rising*

Ratchet was scrubbing up when Prime brought Hot Rod in. The young mech saw Bluestreak lying on a berth and knelt beside him. "Blue..."

Ratchet scanned Hot Rod while he was holding still. "I think he's going to make it. I'm keeping him out for now to avoid further stress. We'll know more in a few joors."

"Is it OK if I sit with him?"

"That's fine. He'll stop trying to override the recharge priority if somebot he knows is with him." Ratchet dialed the lights back. He hoped Hot Rod would fall into recharge but just sitting quietly would let his self-repair protocols do their job.

Mikaela finished disinfecting an energon scald that went from the top of her glove to her elbow. She wasn't going to do anything else with it, busted knuckles and the like just went with the territory as far as she was concerned. Alicia sprayed it with instant bandage to protect it while it healed.

Ratchet said, "Thank you for the help, Alicia."

"No problem, big guy. I'm just glad the kid made it, he was circling the drain."

"It's a miracle either of them survived their first landing without having an adult to guide them. If we'd detected them sooner, this might have been avoided. We could have intercepted them in space," Elita said.

"We got the funding for more surveillance satellites after we deflected Mjolnir, but it takes time to assemble and place them," Optimus replied.

"There was a moment I thought that youngling had offlined in my arms when I was carrying him back to the ship," Elita said. "That has happened too often already."

Ratchet said, "Jolt did everything right, and this time, I think it was enough."

*-T-F-Rising*

Hot Rod was left in peace, but never alone. Ratchet checked on Bluestreak every hour, and the organic who wore the healer's guild sigil on a chain around her neck also checked in frequently. Ratchet gave Hot Rod a language file, so now he could understand the little organic "human."

Hot Rod had never prayed a lot before, but he was praying now. He'd seen bots offline from things that didn't look this bad. Most of Bluestreak's armor had been removed, and a warming blanket covered him.

Kaela had a computer strapped to her arm, she plugged it into Bluestreak's wrist port and watched screen after screen of data scroll by. She made some adjustments to the equipment arrayed around his friend's berth.

Hot Rod asked Ratchet, "Are you sure the...human...?"

"Her name is Mikaela Banes, and she practically rebuilt your friend's main transformation system from the inside out. If he lives, she's the reason he won't be crippled," the old healer informed him.

"What are his chances?"

"That's between him and Primus, son, but they keep getting better the longer he stays with us."

Hot Rod nodded. "Thank you for everything you did."

"I want to run some tests, and I need room to get my equipment in here. Why don't you go out in the commons for a quarter joor or so?"

"Yes, Healer. You'll call me if anything changes?"

"Of course I would," Ratchet assured him.

Jolt showed him where the commons was. It was just like any clan commons, except that it was full of humans. One whole side of the building seemed to be dedicated to their needs.

The place seemed full of sparklings, too, but after he sorted them out there were only five there.

A blue-gray femme and a yellow mech invited him to join them. She introduced them. "This is my mate Bumblebee, and I am Shimmer. Our son Skyrocket, and that's our daughter Dragonfly over there talking to one of her teachers, Mrs. Graham."

The red and gold youngling committed names and appearances to memory. "Hot Rod, Shimmer. Thank you for your hospitality."

She sent Skyrocket to get him a cube of energon. It tasted good, but different than he was used to. What they had refined on Cassidor had been based on hydrogen that they extracted from the atmosphere along with the rarer gases that they had once sold. Here they got most of their energon from simply letting energon cubes absorb solar energy.

As was courtesy, several of the clan came over to say hello. He met Shimmer and Bee's teammate Georgie, who spoke Cybertronian with an accent he couldn't place. They were Black Team, under Elita Prime.

When he heard that, he bowed his head and said, "Thank you for saving my friend."

"Glad…we could…help," Bee replied. He "spoke aloud" by playing audio clips of the words. He answered the question Hot Rod managed the good manners to avoid asking. "Lost my…vocalizer. Old…battle damage."

Hot Rod didn't think the three scouts were much older than he was, but the way Bumblebee said that made it clear he was a seasoned veteran. He looked around. _All _the adults had the scars, the moves, the attitude of soldiers. This was a war band. And looking closer, he thought he could pick out some of the same things about most of the humans in here too.

And clearly most of them were treated as clan. He was confused, but he had too many questions to know where to start asking.

After the evening meal, people started breaking off into family and cohort groups to enjoy the evening. Some sparklings and small humans started playing some noisy video game involving odd little characters with some four wheeled alt racing around a fanciful cartoon track. The object seemed to be competing against each other to collect the most brightly colored prizes, while avoiding being forced off the track. A little mechling said a nasty word when he lost, and got smacked on the back of the helm by a small but scary blue monoped femme. The rest of the littles thought that was funny. The femme shook her head and sat down beside a large black mech who instantly made Hot Rod's list of mechs not to cross—_ever._

Shimmer followed his gaze. "That's Ironhide, Blue Team leader and Prime's Guardian. His bonded is Chromia. That little mechling is their son Firecracker. The man with them is Colonel Will Lennox, commander of the NEST team, the human warriors here. The woman coming over to join them is Will's wife Sara. That means she's his mate. She is a retired warrior in her own right. They're clan, and Ironhide stands as their guardian as well. The little femme and the little human playing the board game? Their sparklings."

"Are they all a cohort?"

"They aren't that formal about it, but I'd say they are. Ironhide and Chromia, along with Ratchet, are Optimus Prime's cohort."

"He is Magnus?"

"Yes, if there were a formal Council. But he and Elita Prime are bonded, so the title only gets used when something really formal happens."

"You're all one clan anyway, right?"

"More or less. Masque and Mirror are still probationary, but Elita Prime stands as sponsor for them, so nobot holds being defectors against them. And then there are ten more who just want to be neutrals now. They don't have weapons and they stay to themselves. They live in the new building next door."

"Uh—what?"

"It's complicated. You know the 'Cons conscripted everyone they could?"

"That's what they tried to do on Cassidor, it's why my clan was wiped out."

"Well, Masque and Mirror are pretenders, not warriors. They played along until they got a chance to jump the fence. These other guys fought, but they just kept their heads down and didn't kill anybody."

Hot Rod nodded, but he wasn't going to trust any 'Con to be a _former_ 'Con. As far as he was concerned, they were here because it was any port in a storm, not because they suddenly decided to mend their ways and be Autobots from now on. "What's a pretender?"

"A scout infiltrator. They're mini-bots who are purpose-built. Instead of having a regular alt form, their first alt is one of the organic race they're meant to infiltrate."

Hot Rod hadn't known that was possible, but the pink drinks the two sisters had were energon. Other than that, they looked just like the two humans they were sitting with. He guessed that was their alt form. Otherwise they would have to look at least sort of Cybertronian. They gave him the creeps and he resolved to stay as far away from them as the small island would allow.

"That's Ambassador Mearing, and her mate Seymour Simmons. She serves as Prime's official representative from the United States. But she's also clan, and Ops Team Leader."

"Wait, how can either side trust her not to be a double agent if she has ties on both sides? That doesn't make sense."

Shimmer said, "Well, it wouldn't, if the US president didn't have one of our commlinks so he and Prime can just talk to each other if anything gets mixed up. We're really close allies with them, and some other countries known as the Commonwealth. NEST is mostly Americans and a few Brits and Canadians. There's also a French guy, and two Japanese soldiers. Besides, Mearing is, well, she's _Mearing."_

Hot Rod was still confused.

"You probably want to get back to Bluestreak, and I just saw Ratchet. May I have the honor of formally presenting you to the Council?"

"The honor would be mine, Warrior."

"What's your full designation?"

"Rod of Cassidor," he replied after an instant of hesitation. Cassidor would live as long as he did, no matter what his adult designation turned out to be.

He followed Shimmer over where the two Primes were sitting. She said, "Elita Prime, Optimus Magnus, it is my honor to present Rod of Cassidor."

Hot Rod knelt. "I acknowledge the spark debt that I owe you, Magnus. It would be my honor to pledge my sword to your service."

"Gladly accepted. Rise, Warrior."

At first he thought that was a mistake, but then he remembered that he had fought and killed in defense of Cassidor and therefore earned the title whether he was ready for it or not. Now he had to live up to it! He stood.

Elita smiled and said, "Welcome, Hot Rod."

"Thank you, Prime."

Optimus said, "Go to your friend, son. We'll figure out a berth room for the two of you later."

"Yes, Prime." Hot Rod followed Shimmer back to Medbay. She wanted to look in on the injured mechling too.

First Aid was on duty, but Ratchet would be back soon. He recharged in his office whenever he had patients in serious condition.

Hot Rod asked the red and white medic, "How is he?"

First Aid said, "He's Kaela's patient. Kaela, have you got a klick?"

The human came over and looked him over.

"Journeyman, can you tell me how Bluestreak is doing?"

She smiled. "His self-repair routines booted up a little while ago. That's a real good sign. We'll still be keeping him in recharge probably until tomorrow, then when a few more low-level processes start up, we'll let him wake up on his own."

"Thank you, Journeyman."

"Call me Kaela, everyone else does."

"Kaela."

"You can stay with him, but you'd better get some recharge time yourself. He'll need you awake when he's awake."

Hot Rod camped out on the floor on the far side of Bluestreak's berth, where he wouldn't be in the healers' way during the night.

The next morning, shift change woke him. He unshuttered his optics to the very welcome sight of Bluestreak looking at him.

"Blue! Hey! Somebody!"

Ratchet came in. "Hello, son. How are you feeling?"

"Hurts," he managed.

Ratchet was glad Bluestreak could carry on a conversation, but very concerned that he wasn't oriented enough to shut off his own pain sensors. He said, "Let me see what I can do about that."

The mechling tried to raise his arm to offer a connection point. It obviously scared him when he couldn't.

"Easy does it, kid. You're going to feel weak for at least a few days."

Bluestreak sighed and relaxed as the pain stopped.

"What's your name?"

"Bluestreak."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Not what it's called. We followed a beacon here. The last thing I really remember is I messed up my landing and I couldn't help hitting rocks. Then a whole bunch of bots found me. Where are we now? It's warm here?"

"Planet Earth, the island of Diego Garcia. Welcome to Paradise. Who's this guy?"

"Hot Rod."

"You'll be OK, kid. You're just going to have to give it a little time."

"How come I don't have my armor?"

"Couldn't repair you with it on, mech. You'll get it back as good as new once I'm sure you won't spring any leaks. I'll see if Wheeljack has it ready, it got busted up too you know."

"Thank you, Healer."

"Hot Rod, you can stay here for a little while and fill Bluestreak in. But then I want you to get out of here and let him rest for a while. Come back this afternoon."

Hot Rod told Bluestreak about the place, but as Ratchet expected, he wasn't awake long. Hot Rod went out front. Chromia was in the commons.

"Uh—excuse me—do you know what I should be doing?"

"How is Bluestreak?"

"He was awake. The healer seems to think he's going to be all right."

"Thank Primus. Let's see. Do you have a berth room yet?"

"No, not yet."

"OK, there's the one on the end, but sometimes when it rains water comes under the door. We have a lot of rain during the storm season here. It would be quieter. Then there's the one between us and my sisters. It's dry and more comfortable if you don't mind sparklings making noise."

"I don't mind sparklings."

"Then there's the new apartment building next door. The apartments are bigger, but you're not right by the commons."

He remembered that was where a bunch of ex-Cons were living. "Bluestreak wouldn't like that. He likes being around a crowd."

"Well, one of you will have to recharge in the lounge, but it ought to be big enough for two younglings." She opened the door. "They lock, but nobody worries about it. Just hardline to it and let it get your signature, then you can lock and unlock it whenever you want. All the team leaders do have overrides but nobot cares."

He nodded. It had been like that on Cassidor, nobot ever bothered locking doors. There was some basic furniture in there, but nothing else. He just had whatever random stuff he had subspaced when the 'Cons attacked, tools mostly and a couple of energon cubes. He put those on the window sill.

"What's your main skill set?" She asked.

"I was a refiner's apprentice. Pipefitting, boilermaking, that kind of thing."

"Does that kind of work suit you?"

"I guess so," he shrugged. "My master knew my parents from way back, in Iacon City. They got killed when I was really small, and he took me in. I mean, of course I apprenticed to him, what else would I do there?"

"It sounds like we need to talk to Wheeljack. You'll also be starting school, so we need to get with Mrs. Graham. Then as soon as Ratchet clears you, Hide wants to know where you are training-wise."

"We weren't a warrior clan but we weren't a bunch of pushovers either."

"Mech, that goes without saying if you killed three 'Con raiders the first time you picked up a sword." Chromia led him to Wheeljack's workshop.

(continued in Part 2)


	29. Long Long Journey Part 2

(Long Long Journey Part 2)

Wheeljack's workshop was next to the Medbay. There were all kinds of inventions scattered all over in various stages of completion. Hot Rod had no idea what most of them were actually supposed to do. Apparently the inventor built weapons, guessing from the layers of repaired damage to the heavily reinforced walls, and all the safety barriers that divided the place into various work spaces. The humans had their own spaces in here, too, tiny work benches and tools usually located under the larger workbenches that the bots used. Now that he thought about it that probably was the safest place for them, as well as an efficient use of space.

"Que, this is Hot Rod. He was an apprentice on a gas refinery so I guess you got yourself a helper. Try not to blow him up," Chromia grinned.

The inventor took her teasing with good grace. "Now where would be the fun in that?"

"Send him to Olivia next. After that, Ratchet wants him."

Some little red balls on the workbench got Hot Rod's attention. They were vibrating slightly, and they had an interesting energy field. He leaned closer to study them. One of them rolled out of place. Without thinking, he reached out to put it back.

There was a loud crack and a flash, and the next thing he knew he was up against the wall trying to figure out what had hit him.

Wheeljack said brightly, "I was wondering how I was going to test those!"

Chromia shook her head and laughed. "Get used to it, kid. Good luck!" She went on about her own work.

Hot Rod got up and glared at the innocent looking objects. "What are those things!"

Wheeljack said, "They're repellers. They act on energy fields, not physical objects, so they're no danger to humans. I meant them as something for humans to scatter behind them in order to discourage pursuit. Of course, these prototypes have only a fraction of the charge that a production model would have."

Hot Rod figured that getting knocked aft over helm would definitely slow down somebot who decided to chase a human. Que helped him up and started asking him questions to figure out how far his training had progressed. "I can't promise you'll always work in your specialty, son, but you'll have plenty of opportunities to cross-train in related crafts."

"That's OK with me, Craftmaster."

Wheeljack acknowledged the title, he actually held several masteries. But he smiled. "I don't really stand on ceremony around here. My designation is Wheeljack, but everyone just calls me Que. Claim a workbench somewhere, you'll want to arrange it your way. This is mine, that's Kaela's under there, and Jolt uses this one when he's tinkering with medical equipment. Ironhide comes in here to work on his guns sometimes. Don't _ever_ touch anything he leaves out on his bench unless you're absolutely certain that you know what it is. It won't just knock you across the shop! And while I'm on that subject, the sparklings are never allowed in here. They have their own workshop at school."

"Yes, Que."

Hot Rod looked around the shop and chose a bench where he wouldn't be in the way if everyone was working at once. He got his tools out of his subspace hold and arranged them in the storage area above his bench. There weren't many.

When he earned his badge, he'd get it from somebody else besides gruff old Master Steelhammer. He wondered if he and his journeymen had gone down fighting before the station blew. _Damn_ 'Cons.

Que showed him where things were stored. At one station, he saw Blue's armor laid out under UV lamps that were curing a new paint job. All the dents had been banged out and the scratches buffed away. "You did a nice job on that."

"Oh, Sunstreaker did the paint. He and Sideswipe are really talented at that, real artists. It's what they would have been...if not for the war."

"They're Prime's Own," he said.

"Yes, they are that. But now we can all be something else besides warriors, Primus be praised."

Hot Rod nodded nodded, though he couldn't imagine anything better than being part of an elite team like that.

Then he saw some kind of a polearm with a blade at the end. "What's this?"

"A weapon that I'm building for Georgie. It's actually a human design called a naginata. For her, it's very effective against larger bots. This one is an energon weapon."

"What kind of a name is Georgie? Not Cybertronian, is it?"

"Not exactly. It's a human name, in honor of a friend whose road came to its end here. You'll like her, I think. This is my main project right now, since we don't have a ship under construction. Do you know anything about energon weapons?"

"I've never seen one before, except in vids," Hot Rod said.

"No reason why you would have. It's a blademaster's weapon, designed to defeat heavy armor. These weapons use their wielder's own energon to create a plasma field around the cutting edge. It softens the armor, allowing the blade to penetrate. Georgie is like Bumblebee, a small-framed bot with the skill to take on front-liners. This weapon will help even the odds for her."

"If it's that hot, how doesn't it burn itself up? Or burn your servo off, for that matter?"

Que was pleased by the question. "The plasma is confined within a magnetic field, and the weapon has to contain cooling systems as well to bleed the excess heat off into subspace where it can dissipate safely. You'll see the blade glowing as it carries the heat off. The plasma field itself isn't visible. Even so, there's a limited amount of time such a weapon can be kept activated before it overheats. That usually isn't an issue. Fights rarely last long enough to overheat a weapon."

Hot Rod nodded. There had not been any of the fancy stuff from the vids. In real life a fight was somebot coming at you with a weapon and a klick later one of you was dead and all you could do was hope it wasn't you.

"What do you want me to do?"

Que said, "I think a standard skills assessment would be the best start." He put the test on a datapad and Hot Rod went to work. The morning passed quickly, while he did written work Que worked on the naginata. Occasionally the inventor put it aside to observe the mechling while he did some practical part of the test. Hot Rod finished by lunchtime.

"I'll score that this afternoon, then we'll know what you need to be learning. Is Bluestreak at about the same level?"

"I think so, we work together all the time."

There were a lot of NEST troops crowded in the galley getting trays of food. Some of them came over to meet him. Que showed him where to get energon.

After lunch, he went over to the compound's school, which was located in the last few rooms of the human side of the commons. The human children and the sparklings were all in classes together, but even in a youngling frame Hot Rod was too big to fit in there comfortably.

Mrs. Graham was a short, stocky woman who wore glasses and had short curly brown hair. Her class consisted of the five sparklings and seventeen human kids varying from eight to thirteen years old.

A sixteen year old girl, Kylie Anders, did online home schooling courses on a laptop. She was working at a table just outside the littles' classroom. Mrs. Graham had her show him what her courses were like.

Kylie was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said Manchester United on it. Her blonde hair was back in a pony tail. She turned the laptop so he could see it. "I'm taking calculus I, world history, English composition, business II, Japanese, and earth science. My electives are flute and creative writing. Instead of PE, I do mixed martial arts and I run. I like football—soccer, I mean—either watching it or playing."

"I'm an apprentice so I won't be taking that many classes, whatever I need most to live here I suppose."

"What do you do for fun?"

"I don't know, what is there to do?"

"Games, movies, all kinds of water stuff if you don't care to get in salt water. Some of the bots won't unless they have to. What's your alt form?"

"I was a racer, but I haven't had a chance to scan one here yet. I lived on a floating refinery on a gas giant, there wasn't much chance to use my alt."

"What did you do for fun there?" Kylie asked.

"We had skiffs for people who didn't have flying alts. Blue and I used to get out and fly those. I used to get in trouble for flying too fast, though. I don't know, I'll do something. Do you have music here?"

"Sure, all kinds."

"What do you like?"

"I like indie stuff, mostly. Anything I can dance to. Not that there's anyone my age to dance with. It's all those little kids."

Hot Rod had thought Cassidor had been a boring place in the aft end of nowhere, but at least he and Bluestreak had each other to hang out with. "I think I'd have _glitched."_

"The adults like it here but I _hate_ it. I feel like I've been in jail for nine years. When I turn eighteen I am _so _out of here."

"What's this planet like? So far I've seen the deep freezer of the universe, and this place."

"There are mountains and forests and deserts, everything, it just depends on where you are."

Mrs. Graham came over. "I see that you two have been getting to know each other! Perfect! Now, from what Wheeljack tells me, he tested you pretty thoroughly in math and science, so I'll just wait for him to copy me your scores in those areas. We'll do placement tests in your other subjects. Now I don't expect you to know things you obviously haven't had a chance to learn, so feel free to skip questions about classes you haven't taken. I'll copy a reading list to your data pad, and that will give you a pretty good start. Basically I just need to know where to start teaching you, so these tests aren't for a grade."

"Yes, Mrs. Graham."

After Hot Rod finished his placement tests, Kylie took him over to Medbay. Ratchet corralled him for a checkup, and cleared him. Then he and Kylie went back to see Bluestreak.

He was sitting up on his berth looking out the window. "Hot Rod!"

"Hey, Blue! I see you got your armor back."

"Yeah, just a little while ago. I might be allowed to get up tomorrow."

Hot Rod started shaking with relief and sat down on the floor before he fell down. "So help me, you afthead, if you ever fraggin' scare me like that again—!"

Kylie asked, "What did you _do, _anyway?"

"He hit this huge fraggin' mountain, that's what! It's a wonder he wasn't scattered all over the Pit-be-damn place!"

Blue said, "Yeah, and you sound like Steelhammer yelling about the stunts you'd pull in the skiff."

"Well, if I scared him that bad, no wonder he yelled. When I couldn't get you on comms, I thought you offlined."

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing anywhere near as bad. I hit ice and it gave with me, so it wasn't like I hit as hard. Except I didn't know it but there are _huge_ cracks in the ice. I fell down to the bottom of one of those cracks and ice fell in on top of me. I didn't have enough energon to get out and I stasis-locked. _Primus, _that was so fraggin' cold!"

The girl introduced herself, "Kylie, Bluestreak. My father is with NEST. We're all going to be in school together."

Hot Rod told him about Wheeljack, and they filled him in on classes.

Kaela came in with some energon for Bluestreak, and then sat down to watch his pressure for a while. A sudden drop would mean a blowout somewhere and that would be an emergency. But all his repairs seemed to be holding.

"Kylie, can you show Hot Rod where the proving ground is?"

"Sure, I have martial arts practice this afternoon anyway."

They went outside. "It's kind of a long way. I usually run up the beach to warm up."

Hot Rod didn't see how it could be that far, because the island wasn't that big. At sixteen feet tall, his strides were long enough to keep up. She ran on the wet sand where she didn't get bogged down. There was an expanse of sand and pebbles between the surf and the dark shadows under the trees. The sea looked like it went on forever.

Something more than ten times his size roared overhead, losing altitude at a terrifying rate as it made for a long wide strip of pavement on the other side of the compound. He scanned, found no trace of energon. "Who the frag is that?"

"It isn't a bot! That's a US Air Force B-52 bomber!"

"Holy slag! What-there are human pilots in that?"

She laughed. "Yeah, and gunners, and a lot of other crew. So much for harmless little fleshies, huh?"

"Well, I don't think they'd have much luck against seekers or aerialbots."

"We found out we can't _dogfight_ seekers. But, Mr. Decepticon, meet Mr. Tomahawk Missile. A whole bunch of them did in Chicago."

"Chicago?"

Talking as she ran, she gave him the short version of the Decepticon War. "Now I left a lot of stuff out, some I don't know and some takes too long to tell, but that's basically what happened."

"We're all that are left of our people?"

"There are probably other survivors out there like you and Bluestreak. There are the miners that Mirage and Wayfarer went to rescue. But...I'm so sorry."

"It was the Fallen who messed everything up, wasn't it?"

"I…think so. I don't understand it all." Kylie let the way along a path through the trees. Here he actually had trouble keeping up, she had a lot more room on the narrow path than he did.

The path came out near a big area surrounded by a chain link fence. There was a building, a shooting range, and the rest of it was wide open space.

Ironhide was out in the middle of this open area taking on Jolt, Bumblebee and fifteen or twenty NEST troops. Sand and mud and paintballs were flying everywhere, and so occasionally were a couple of bots and a stray soldier or two. They got right back up and back into the fight—quitting wasn't in anybody's vocabulary.

Hot Rod said, "Holy slag. Been nice knowing you, Kylie."

"He knows he's gonna kick your aft. Just try to lose with style."

"Thanks so much."

Kylie went to the building while Hot Rod watched the sparring match and waited to talk to Ironhide.

Georgie and Shimmer came in. Shimmer said, "Hey! Hot Rod!"

"Shimmer. Georgie."

Georgie got some room and drew a weapon out of subspace. At first he thought it was a sword, and she could use it as such in close quarters, but with a flip of her wrist a long pole extended from the grip. It was a non-energon version of the naginata that Wheeljack was building for her.

She went into a practice routine with it, slowly at first, then building to a series of lightning spins and thrusts and parries with a shadow opponent. Hot Rod imagined that blade glowing orange with plasma fire.

Shimmer was doing the same sort of practice, unarmed. Then the two femmes bowed to each other and launched into a free sparring session. Shimmer was at an immediate disadvantage, kept at a distance by the staff's length. She parried with two short swords and kept up an aggressive series of fast attacks, dancing out of reach, making opportunities to get in under her friend's guard. Whenever they got close there would be a furious exchange of blows, sparks and sand flying. There was a sudden stop when Shimmer trapped the naginata in crossed swords. Georgie dropped it and, with a shout, launched a high kick that probably would have taken Shimmer's head off if she hadn't deliberately stopped short. They each took a step back and bowed again. Georgie recovered and subspaced her weapon.

Laughing and loudly insulting each other's fighting ability, the gang of mechs and soldiers came in. A medic looked at one of his teammates, who had got a black eye, apparently from somebody's stray elbow. They were all apparently pretty happy with the strategy they had cooked up, depending on some guy named Willie Pete, whoever that was. Ironhide was shaking out small ball bearings. He threw a handful of them at Lennox, hard enough that he and a couple of his friends felt it pretty good. That started the whole scramble off again till Shimmer yelled at them for getting underfoot. Jolt used his magnetics to collect all the ball bearings.

Ironhide sluiced off some of the mud under a water hose on the side of the building. "Hey, kid! Did Ratchet give you the green light?"

"Yes, Team Leader!"

"Then let's go."

Hot Rod tried an attack, and took a solid punch that sent him airborne before he landed on his aft in the mud. He got up and tried again.

Six or eight times.

The last time, a vicious hooked blade shot out of Ironhide's wrist. Hot Rod rolled clear and drew his sword, barely parried. He kicked the much larger mech in the side of the knee and got some distance.

As Kylie had said, he didn't have a prayer against the weapons specialist-until the three Black Team scouts and the medic jumped in to even the odds. Ironhide was easily taking on all five of them. Bee, and to some extent Georgie, were the main threats.

Hot Rod had no training in fighting as part of a team, but he quickly got the basic idea.

When his energon levels started going low, Ironhide had enough respect for Ratchet's wrench to call a halt. "Not bad. You've got a lot of room for improvement, but you've got potential. You're stronger than you look, too. Let me see that sword."

Hot Rod handed it over hilt first, like you saw in the vids. The modern style was to lay the flat of the blade in your off servo and hold it out that way. The kid hadn't had any formal dueling training from a sword-master, but he did know the basic moves.

"This is a piece of slag. Where did you get it?"

"The Decepticon it belonged to didn't need it after Cirrus got done with him."

"It's a wonder it didn't break the first time you really hit somebot with it, and it's balanced all wrong for you besides. It's a memorial from your clansman's last fight. Hang it on your wall, and we'll find you something more reliable to carry."

"Yes, Team Leader."

"Do you have a ranged weapon?"

"No, we weren't going to be allowed them until we were adults."

"We do things different here. Have Wheeljack outfit you with something tomorrow. Wash off some of that mud before you track it in anywhere, unless you want the femmes on your aft about it. Figured out what alt you want yet?"

"I was a racer before. What's similar to that here?"

"Small and fast, hmm. Ask Ratchet if whatever you choose likely to take as your adult alt when he checks you out tonight."

Hot Rod got under the cold water shower to spray off the worse of the mud and sand. By then, Kylie was finished as well. Now she was wearing another big, baggy T-shirt that said "Property of NEST" on it. She dropped back with him as the other bots transformed to head up to the compound.

He was tired and sore, but it was a good kind of sore.

"How did it go?"

"I never, _ever_ want to fight that mech for real," he said.

"Been a lot of 'Cons' last mistake," she replied. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I think so. He was going easy on me," he admitted, embarrassed.

"Well, it's the same thing with Colonel Lennox. He makes me feel like a dweeb every time we spar. But I'm getting better. Let's walk back along the road so you can see the lagoon side of the island."

Both of them were happy to take it slow. Some off-duty sailors were having a beach party and they were invited to come down, but Kylie whispered it was a bad idea and apologized that her dad was looking for her. They kept moving.

"What was wrong with those people?"

"Nothing, but I'm underage and they had beer, and I'd have been the only girl there. It would have got them in trouble even if nothing happened."

Hot Rod could translate enough of that to get the general idea. "So you're still a youngling too?"

"Two more years, yeah. That's how long I have to put up with my dad."

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah, it's just—he changed after Mom left us. He's strict and...well, not mean, exactly. He just doesn't care about me anymore."

"That's…I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

"What's that fighting style you and Shimmer and Georgie do?"

"Well, it's more than one style, but I was doing a couple of Shotokan karate katas today. Shimmer has one of your sword styles, I know what it is but we just can't pronounce your language. It's the one Sides teaches. The unarmed stuff that Georgie and Shimmer were doing is Shotokan as well. Then Georgie has the naginata."

"How did she learn all the human styles?"

"I don't really know," Kylie said. "I mean, it makes all kinds of sense for smaller bots but I don't know how she learned it in the first place. She's really good."

"I saw that. I almost think she could give Ironhide a fight."

"She can. I've watched them spar one on one. If he can close, it's all over, but with her naginata that isn't always easy. Of course, if he starts shooting, forget it, nobody but the Primes and the Big Twins have a chance. Blue team specializes in ranged combat, not hand to hand."

"Holy slag."

"Yeah, and wait till you see Optimus Prime sparring," she said. "You just would not _believe."_

"Are you going to join NEST?"

"My dad won't let me. That's one reason I'm leaving. I figure if I go back to the States and work my way up through a different branch of the service where he can't pull strings to hold me back as easily, I can try to transfer in on my own merits."

"After you're an adult, what can he do?"

"It's complicated," she said. "They think he's trying to protect me, not control me. He doesn't want me to be free to walk out on him like Mom did."

"Where is she now? Can't she help you?"

"Mom's remarried, she has more kids with her new husband and I'm just in the way."

"I'm sorry. At least you still have your dad."

"I lost him a long time ago, Hot Rod. He treats me like some kind of a _thing_ that belongs to him. I've got too much living to do to waste my whole life waiting for him to wake up. He gives me a place to stay, I stay out of trouble and don't embarrass him. It's only two more years."

She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him. Hot Rod didn't know what to say. He had felt sorry for himself because he had been orphaned young, but first his parents and then Steelhammer had always been there for him. He had always been surrounded by clan. Coming from the culture he did, he couldn't imagine being rejected by family.

They walked in a companionable silence the rest of the way back, and checked on Bluestreak. Ratchet caught Hot Rod and took him off for an exam. He got a blistering lecture for continuing to spar with Ironhide after that first solid hit, but since he wasn't sorry he hadn't punked out, he just said "Yes, Healer" at all the appropriate spots to keep from getting beaned with a wrench. When the lecture seemed to be winding down, he said, "I'm supposed to ask if you think my next alt will be my adult one."

Ratchet said, "I don't think you're quite ready for your last growth phase yet. It's probably going to be another year or two, because you're going to be a big mech. I can tell that by the way your self-repair systems are reinforcing your joints and so forth. I think if you choose an alt now, it will be another intermediate one. But I could be wrong, so pick one you can live with just in case."

"Yes, Healer. How is Bluestreak doing?"

"Very well. I want to keep him another night. If he's still doing well tomorrow, he can go. But no sparring, no doing _anything_ strenuous for at least a week. _Nothing_ to raise his fluid pressures and stress those repairs. I'm going to expect you and Kylie to watch him to make sure he doesn't take any dumb chances."

"Yes, Healer."

(continued in Part 3)


	30. Long Long Journey Part 3

(Long Long Journey Part 3)

The next morning, Hot Rod hurried to Wheeljack's workshop to get his guns. Wheeljack told him, "We'll start you off with a light autocannon. We can always upgrade when you're ready. Do you know how to control your pain sensors? If you aren't sure, go have a healer show you."

"I already know," he said. "I used to get accused of being accident prone when I was a sparkling. I don't know why anybot would've thought that," he said, with patently false innocence.

Hot Rod removed his forearm plates. Wheeljack said, "There isn't room in the forearm of a youngling's frame for both a retractable dagger and a cannon. Do you want two cannons, and subspace everything else?"

"Is that the best way to do it?"

"Well, _I_ think so, because if one cannon jams you still have the other one, and you have the option to load two different types of rounds. Also, I don't like retractable blades, especially as a beginner's weapon. They can cause you a real problem if they get stuck, and bent badly enough that you can't eject them. Those two things can very easily happen at once. Being able to let go of a blade could save your life."

That made sense to Hot Rod.

It took about an hour to get them installed, then Hot Rod had to learn the minor transformation that readied them. After that, they went over his scores from his placement test yesterday.

He and Bluestreak went to their apartment after that. Hot Rod let Bluestreak have the berth room, so if his friend needed to recharge during the day, Hot Rod wouldn't wake him up going in and out.

Bluestreak was bored with lying around, so he decided to go to school that afternoon. He took the placement tests while Hot Rod started his classwork. Mrs. Graham had assigned an overview of world history, having learned from the sparklings that memorizing facts was not a problem. Understanding what they read sometimes was. And the sparklings had the advantage of having grown up beside, if not in, the culture that they were studying.

Along with the accepted version of history taught in human schools, she had given him an overview of what they knew about Cybertronian influence on human culture beginning 17,000 years ago when the Ancient Ones had sacrificed themselves to prevent the Fallen from harvesting Earth's sun. The essay question she assigned him and Kylie for world history was to research possible ways that the Cybertronian visitors might have influenced human culture.

Kylie saw that, to do that, they were going to have to research cradle-of-civilization cultures at that time. Then Hot Rod got the idea to look for things they had in common. "The same things can be invented different places at the same time, but if it's something complicated, it was more likely to come from them, right?"

Kylie shrugged. "Makes sense to me. Let's search for cave paintings or something."

Mrs. Graham suggested that they talk to Sam to get ideas to narrow their search.

Kylie asked, "Sam Witwicky? What does he have to do with it?"

"Don't make me feel old, Egypt was only nine years ago," Mrs. Graham said.

"My dad was assigned to NEST after Egypt," Kylie shrugged. "Sorry. I was seven then."

"Well, it _is_ history class," she teased. "Tell Sam what you're working on. He has a story that will blow your mind."

"Nobody says that anymore, Mrs. G."

"I do, and I'm somebody," Mrs. Graham teased.

Bluestreak handed in his placement test. "What should I do now?"

"Hot Rod, give him a copy of your reading list. You can start on those while I mark your test. Hot Rod, how far on the list did you get?"

"I downloaded them," he said. "There's a lot I don't understand."

"Remember that our culture changes much faster than yours. Our lifespan is about one of your vorns—and a vorn seems to have approximately the same meaning to you as a year does to us. Some of those cultures had a radically different world view than our societies today have, even though relatively those things weren't written that long ago. We have their words, but to really understand them—to be able to put ourselves in their place and view the world as they did—is probably equally difficult for all three of you."

Bluestreak said, "But—wait—you only live—that can't be _right_, there has to be some kind of math mistake!"

"One vorn is 82 years, correct?"

"Y-yes—but—"

She said gently, "That's a long time for a human. The average life expectancy in England, where I was born, is a little less that that, I think about 80 years. A long time for us—but a very short time for you, isn't it?"

Both of them nodded, shocked into silence. Kylie was looking at them with pity. The difference in their lifespans was a harsh fact of life that she already knew. She said, "You know how long anybody lives? _Right now._ People—bots and humans—die every day. There's nothing you can do. So you do all the living you can while you're here. Worry about tomorrow when it gets here."

Olivia Graham had heard her husband express sentiments like that, when he was drunk. But these kids—even the little ones in the classroom—looked mortality in the eye stone cold sober. That was the universe they lived in. That was cold hard reality when a classmate's parent went out and didn't come back, then that classmate disappeared too, taken back home wherever the hell that was. The grim reaper didn't just give out free passes, and it was the lucky person who managed to steal one. Temporarily. Bluestreak and Hot Rod had just had a sharp reminder of that. Now to find out that their new friend would _at best_ be dead of old age in the equivalent of a year's time? Nobody ever said life was fair, but she hated to see any of "her kids" have to get hit in the face with it.

Here endeth the lesson.

Olivia assigned their homework in their other classes, and sent the three of them off to Medbay to make sure Bluestreak got checked out by the medics on time. She watched them cross the commons together before she went back to her younger class.

It was a subdued group of younglings that walked into Medbay. Kaela said, "Whoa, who died?"

"Not funny, K. They just found out how long we live," Kylie said.

_"Oh._ Open mouth, insert foot. Look—I'm sorry you had to find out that way. But here on Earth we've got a saying: There's only two things you can count on, that's death and taxes. That's just the way it is. Worrying about it just wastes the time you do have." She sent Bluestreak back to Ratchet's office.

Later, Bluestreak walked up to the proving grounds with them. He wasn't actually allowed to do anything, of course, but he was allowed to go up there and sit in the sun and watch. It felt great to get out and move around some.

Ironhide had Hot Rod on the shooting range that day. Kylie was working on a more advanced kata under Georgie's supervision. Bluestreak had never seen anything like the femme and the teenager spinning and punching and kicking in perfect synchronization.

Kylie went in the dojo to hit the showers. She was sore from learning the new kata, so Hot Rod gave her a ride on his shoulder. The discussion was about what alt to choose. Kylie was tired enough to be content to just listen, she wasn't a car expert anyhow.

That evening they got a chance to talk to Sam in the commons. He was playing with Danny, who was still wide awake, while Carly had taken their little daughter Alanna up to bed. Danny was still kicking a soccer ball around with all his five-year-old might. They had decided to let him burn off some energy before trying to put him to bed.

Sam grinned at the three teenagers. Damn if they didn't remind him of Bee and himself, way back when. And how the hell had eleven years ago ever become way back when?

They explained their school project. Sam ended up telling them the whole story about the Fallen, the Allspark—Optimus getting himself offlined to save _his _stupid aft. The search for the Matrix. Jetfire, the senile old ex-Decepticon Seeker who had ended up doing what was probably the single bravest thing Sam had ever seen anyone do, to save them all. All of that was necessary to give context to his encounter with the Ancient Primes.

"Now if you want to look for evidence of early Cybertronian influence on human cultures, that's where I'd start. Egypt, where the Fallen had the harvester and got into it with the locals, and then Petra, where there was a trade city built up around the Tomb of the Ancients. All that probably made it into myths and legends somehow."

*-T-F-Rising*

Three days later, NEST and Blue Team were ordered out to check out a report of possible Cybertronian activity near Charleston, West Virginia. Kylie was getting ready for school when her dad came in. "Look, I have a mission so I don't have time to discuss this. You're getting too chummy with those new bots. I don't want you hanging around them outside school."

"What, why?"

"Because I'm your father and I said so. When I get back here I better find out you've been doing what you were told, have you got that?"

Kylie gasped as if she had been hit. "Fuck you! I never did anything wrong! You don't _get_ to treat me like a damn dog!"

"You are a damn dog, you're a bitch like your no good mother!" He raised his hand to slap her.

Mistake. She was already too hurt and shocked by his words to think. When physically attacked, she just reacted as she had been trained. Sidestepped the blow. Turned and kicked, hard. Anders slammed into the refrigerator and fell to the floor.

Kylie said, "You can be a hard-hearted asshole if you want to. You can stop being a father to me if you want to—hell, nothing succeeds like success, you did that the day Mom walked out on both of us. BUT YOU DO NOT EVER GET TO _HIT_ ME!"

"We're done! I'm sending you to your mother, and if she doesn't want you, you can whore on the street for all I care!" He got up, threw a chair, then slammed out.

Kylie fell to the floor crying, and that was where Bluestreak and Hot Rod found her when she didn't show up for class.

Bluestreak coaxed her out of the apartment to make sure she was all right, while Hot Rod went looking for somebody to help. He figured Kaela was the best, she was a healer and she knew about humans too.

They found Kylie crying on Bluestreak's shoulder.

Kaela looked her over for injuries, and didn't see any. "Kylie, honey, what happened?"

"My dad!"

"Did he hit you?"

"He tried. I k-kicked him into the fridge."

It took fifteen minutes to get the whole story out of the hysterical girl. "Damn, and that afthead's gone out on a mission. If Lennox doesn't kill him, I will." She opened the door and whistled at the mess made by the broken chair and the stuff it had hit. She took some pictures on her cell phone in case she needed documentation later. "Take her to Medbay and have Alicia look at her. At least she can give her a pass to get out of class today."

Kaela told Olivia what happened. "I don't know what to do to fix this one, Liv. Can he really kick her out?"

"That won't be a problem. Anders shouldn't have tried to hit her, there's a zero tolerance policy for domestic violence. You need to go to—Will's out with blue team, go find Al and tell him exactly what you told me. He will get this sorted. Anders will be forced into counseling, and if he ever tries to hit his daughter again, he'll get locked up. After she kicks his arse, from the sound of things. But I don't see why he just erupted now."

"He's a control freak. Separating their victims from their family and friends is what they do, right? Kylie has never had friends before. Now all of a sudden she's got two of them who can tell him to keep his hands off her and back it up. Yeah, he panicked."

"You don't think there was more going on—?"

"No, she was too shocked he tried to hit her, I don't think he's touched her. But it sounds like there was a lot more emotional abuse going on than anyone ever knew about. Where is Al?"

"Ops, probably, with a mission on."

Kaela sprinted across to ops. "I need to speak to Captain Graham."

Sunstreaker told her, "Sure, Kaela, just go on up and wait for a quiet klick to talk to him. What's wrong?"

"There's a situation—look, this is going to get…official. I don't think I should talk about it."

"OK but if I can do anything?"

"Might need you to kinda, accidentally on purpose, scare the slag out of somebody."

"Just let me know when and where."

"Thanks, Sunny." She went up the stairs. Mearing, Optimus and Graham were watching the board. The map showed some kind of industrial area along a river. Helmet cams and feeds from the bots showed the inside of a darkened chemical plant. They were clearing the area by the numbers, searching for something among the equipment.

Lennox shot at something silver with a lot of legs, barely missed it. Whatever it was returned fire and the agents took cover. Lennox asked, "Is that him, Ops?"

Mearing pulled up the image in question from his feed. It was the fugitive Decepticon Scalpel. "That's affirmative, NEST-6. Target confirmed."

Lennox ordered three of his men to move around the lab table that Scalpel was hiding behind to flank the 'Con. Kaela realized one of them was Anders.

Lennox threw a flashbang, then he and the rest of the squad came around the other side of the lab table.

Anders deliberately broke cover and fired a full burst—at the same time as the Decepticon. Both of them were dead before the brass hit the floor.

Both the NEST team and Ops exploded into shouts and curses.

Some time later, Kaela got the chance to explain to Graham about Anders and his daughter.

His reaction was "Oh, bloody fuckin' hell."

And Kaela figured that about said it all. "What do we do now?"

"Nothing. Don't do anything until I can talk to the Colonel."

"Right."

"Let him decide how to break it to the kid. He's her Sensei, and I don't think she really has anybody else now."

"Yeah. Anders shoulda done this on his own time," she growled. "Fuckin' bastard got what he wanted, collateral damage all over hell."

Graham's answer was a grim nod. It wasn't the first time he'd seen suicide-by-enemy, but he hadn't expected it here.

*-T-F-Rising*

Lennox got off the _Venture_ to find Graham waiting to talk to him. He let out one loud curse, then saw his men taken care of. He left them with Graham, while Ironhide took him up to the compound.

He told Hide what Graham had told him. Being fathers themselves, neither of them could figure out what went through somebody's head to make him abuse his kid. Either one of them could cheerfully have brought the man back from the dead just to shoot him again for what his suicide was going to do to a sixteen-year-old.

Lennox thought about it and finally said, "Look, they've been through a lot themselves, but while I'm talking to Kylie, tell Hot Rod and Bluestreak. If they can be there for her, that might be the best thing for all three of them. Nobody better to pull you out of hell than somebody else who's been there. But if they can't, I'll take her to my place. I don't want to put too much on them after all that's happened."

Ironhide growled agreement. "What will happen to her?"

"I don't know yet. From what Al said, the worst thing Anders could think of to threaten Kylie with was packing her off to her mother. Is there anything under your laws we could use?"

"Will, if I'd ever caught a clansman abusing a youngling, I'd have killed him myself. Things like that get taken care of within the clan, and anyone _that_ glitched, you're doing them a favor to put them out of their misery. And the whole clan would be there for the little one. I just don't understand this whole thing."

"Me either, buddy. I fucked up. I should have seen it coming. I failed Anders and Kylie and the whole unit."

"You've got those psych evals that everybody talks about. Aren't they supposed to give you a helms up about slag like this before it all hits the fan?"

"Yeah, they are, and I'll know the reason why they didn't. But it happened on my watch. I don't know what Morshower will do, but I'd have a whole lot of questions if I were in his place."

Ironhide couldn't argue with that. "It wasn't your fault. Either one of them could have asked for help."

"Maybe Kylie was, and we were too busy being big damn heroes to hear her."

"You know you saved her life, teaching her to defend herself. She taught Anders enough respect that he yelled and threw furniture instead of going for a weapon."

"God, what a mess."

Kylie had been examined by the CMO, who had confirmed that her only injury was a bruised foot from kicking a piece of Anders' kit. Wheeljack had kept all three kids busy in his workshop all day, after Ratchet had told him about Anders.

Alicia and Kaela were waiting outside Ratchet's office, which was just through a door across the corridor from Wheeljack's shop. All Med-Sci was around close. Lennox thought about that, as Que's apprentices the mechlings were Med-Sci and it looked like they were ready to adopt Kylie.

Lennox had made this visit too many times, but always before he had been able to honestly tell the family they could be proud. That was cold comfort but it was something. This time, he was scrambling for some truth that didn't threaten to lay Anders' suicide at Kylie's door. In the end, he stuck to bare facts. There had been a shootout. Anders had been killed, but he had taken out a menace. It had happened so fast no one could have done anything. He hadn't suffered.

Hot Rod and Bluestreak were right there. Lennox let them comfort her for a moment before he asked, "Kylie, can I get you anything?"

She shook her head. "Where do I have to go now?"

She knew dependents couldn't stay on base if their service member was killed.

Que stepped up. "I'll take her on as an apprentice. There's a precedent with Kaela."

Hide said, "That could work. Ratchet is Russ's legal grandfather."

"Kylie, would that work for you? It's not just a legal technicality. You'd be taking on a responsibility."

"Yes, sir. If they let me, I'd like that very much. Can I stay someplace else besides that apartment?"

Hot Rod said, "Stay with us tonight. You don't need to be by yourself."

Will said, "I'll get Kaela to go with you and get some things."

"What do I have to do about the—the funeral?"

"Christ. Let me worry about that."

"Thank you, sir."

*-T-F-Rising*

Morshower saw the video and read the reports, including Anders' psych evaluations. There was nothing to indicate something like this was likely to happen. As for the altercation between Kylie and her dad that morning, Morshower buried the whole thing lest somebody behind a desk somewhere should try to make it Kylie's fault. Officially, Anders went down as another KIA. One man killed to take out one 'Con that they'd been after for nine years didn't raise any eyebrows. When Lennox tried to say it was his responsibility, Morshower pointed to the star on his shoulder and said, "No, Colonel, it's mine."

Anders had left no burial instructions and had no other kin. There was a place he had liked to fish in the surf. Kylie had his ashes scattered there, an act of kindness and respect Lennox wasn't sure he deserved. But they could respect the uniform.

Mearing investigated the mother, and found that she was only interested in money. When she found out Kylie would be getting everything, she was anxious to give her poor daughter a home. Then she changed her mind when Mearing mentioned that a financial guardian would be looking out for Kylie's best interests. That was the last they ever heard of her.

Kylie was used to being alone. Now for the first time in her life she had a family. That took some adjustment, because Que took a real interest in what she wanted and went out of his way to get her on the right track to get there.

School let out for the summer. By then Ratchet had finally cleared Bluestreak. He and Hot Rod chose alt forms, classic GTOs. The muscle cars were light but very fast, exactly what they needed now. Hot Rod would need something larger eventually but the GTO probably would be suited for Bluestreak even in his adult form.

One day they were out near the short pier. Kylie had been swimming, and now she was lying in the sun. Hot Rod and Bluestreak were nearby. For once there was nothing to worry about, nothing she had to do and nowhere she had to be. They were home and they were safe. She asked, "Who has my flute?"

Without really waking up from his recharge, Hot Rod flipped it out of subspace and almost dropped it into her lap without even seeming to aim. Sitting cross-legged on her towel, she took the flute out of its case and started to improvise along with the surf, with the gulls occasionally adding a counter-melody of their own.

Bluestreak said, "I feel kind of guilty. It's good here, but my parents and my sister..."

Kylie put her flute in her lap. "They loved you. They'd want you to be happy."

"Do you think they know?"

She thought about her dad sitting Out There someplace, watching her going to school and picking out her own clothes and learning a trade and hanging out with her friends. Nobody cursed at her and made her feel worthless. She didn't have to be afraid any more. That would be justice. Not revenge, but justice, if he knew. She smiled, feeling light and free now that she could forgive him and move on. On the other hand, she knew that Bluestreak's family had been close and loving. They would be happy to see him doing normal everyday youngling things. "I hope so, Blue. I surely do hope so." She started to play again, this time trying to keep up with the sunlight dancing on the water.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Long Long Journey by Enya. This chapter is dedicated to wacko12, who asked me several chapters ago if Hot Rod would be in the story. /A.N._


	31. Rolling Home

(Chapter 23—Rolling Home)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2017, deep space)

Wayfarer secured from jump and sent to Mirage, ::Wake up, love. We're through the last jump point. You need to get us some energon.::

Her sparkmate came out of stasis lock and sent a loving caress down the links she had to both his wrists, before regretfully disengaging. ::Where are we?::

She shuddered, just as reluctant to let him go. ::We're about six joors out.::

The red mech moved slowly after two years in stasis lock. He gave her all the energon, and when she protested, he slipped his hand inside a panel to stroke a major line. ::You need more than I, _cara. _Share with me after we make sure we're alone out here.::

::Ohhh, yes,:: she replied. ::Primus, but you're a distraction!::

::I could attempt to be less so, if that is your…desire.:: He went up to the cockpit and hardlined to the console, ostensibly to share her senses. But only a few moments later, he smiled as he felt her own hardline seeking his port in return. He allowed her access and let their awareness merge. Her engines fired briefly to clear the jump point. No one was near, so they set course for the mining colony.

He went back into the cabin. She slid a panel out of the way, allowing him access to a small, heavily armored alcove containing her processor and spark chamber. Once inside, she closed the panel behind him.

::Come to me, love,:: she whispered through their bond.

He answered with wave of love and need that she echoed. While he had slept in stasis lock, she had been awake for much of the trip, and it had been lonely. First, she did as he had asked and shared energon with him, before they moved on to anything else.

But then an alarm went off. Something was moving at the extreme edge of Wayfarer's range.

::The miners?:: He asked.

::Wrong size,:: she replied. ::Either you see them in ore carrier form, one of their alts, hopping about a light-year at a time at the most, or you see one of their colony ships, which are huge. I don't know what those are, but they're twice my size. Their course leads here, from the mining colony.::

Swearing in a combination of Cybertronian, English and Italian, the scout drew away from her and snapped his armor back in place. ::For their sake those had better be peaceful customers. If they are not, they are going to find out just how much I appreciate their sense of timing!::

Wayfarer agreed with the sentiment, but she said, ::I know you're mad, but they're bigger than me, we're outnumbered and we're scouts, not front-liners.::

She cloaked and moved, in case the interlopers had caught her on sensors. Then she cut power to everything unnecessary and they sat back to watch. The four ships were clearly a Cybertronian design of some sort, but not one that either of them recognized. They approached the jump point and disappeared.

Mirage asked, "_Cara, _would I…_distract…_you too much if we set course for the colony?"

"Possibly. But we won't know unless you try," she teased. "I wonder who those bots were?"

"I don't know. Maybe the miners can tell us," he said.

"I can't wait to introduce you to my friends." Supposing that she would be _very_ distracted, she set proximity alarms and left the cloak active. Mirage found some very interesting and inventive ways to pass the journey from the jump point to the colony.

*-T-F-Rising*

Wayfarer roused from a light recharge when her internal alarm told her they were nearing their destination. The system had an average yellow star, three inner planets and an asteroid belt that the miners had worked during Cybertron's heyday, and two gas giants. Now the colony was located in deep tunnels under the third planet, naturally fortified against the infrequent but devastating Decepticon raids.

Wayfarer hailed the colony and received only silence in answer. She knifed into the planet's thin atmosphere as fast as her shields would allow, dropping low over the red desert and eventually reaching a deep canyon that stretched for hundreds of kilometers, once a rift when the planet had been tectonically active. She dropped into the canyon, running its breathtaking twists and turns with all the confidence of a native.

"It's a flare star, and this planet has no magnetosphere. We have to live underground. Before my time, this was one of the major outlying trade cities of the whole nation. Now...it's just an outpost full of desperately poor people and a target for raiders."

Mirage felt his sparkmate's terror finding out why nobot was answering her hail. "Maybe their comms array was damaged, _cara_._"_

The smartship winged over to thread a narrow place, then dropped into blackness, descending a vertical shaft designed for a ship that dwarfed her.

The massive forms of the colony ships occupied huge bays on either side of the shaft. Wayfarer touched down in a smaller bay above them. She tried to hardline to a console there that would have allowed her to extend her awareness into the colony, but the terminal wasn't working. When she shined a light around, there was no one.

Mirage cloaked himself. "I'll find out what happened here. Let me know if you see anyone moving around out here."

"Mirage, be careful. We don't know where everybot is." She uploaded him a map of the colony. "The outlying tunnels go on forever. Don't get lost in there because I can't do anything to help you."

"I'll be careful, _cara. _Stay cloaked and watch the door."

She watched him disappear into the mine entrance.

Mirage was careful to move slowly enough not to trip over anything—or make any noise, in this chill, deathly silence. There was no power to anything, though as Wayfarer had said this had once been a wide, well-lighted avenue leading to a mighty trade city.

Mirage's duties as a scout had led him into some bad places, but if he was a superstitious bot he would have described this place as haunted. A few bombed-out cities had given him the same feeling, but shells of buildings filled with the gray, shattered corpses of their inhabitants were understandably so. Here, it was as if the thousands of bots who had once lived and worked here had just disappeared into thin air, leaving the empty passages of their home as the only testimony that they had ever been here.

On Earth, surrounded by her billions of inhabitants, it was easy to forget the scale of devastation left in the wake of Cybertron's fall. Here, there was no avoiding it.

A low rumbling sound, felt as much as heard, sent him to cover in one of the many alcoves in the side walls. He waited for a full breem for some sign of what had broken the tomblike silence of the place, but there was nothing further.

At least there was _something_ else alive down here.

Wayfarer told him, ::Just ahead you should be coming to a watch point, there were always three or four guards on duty there.::

::There are no lights here.::

::They don't need a lot of lights,:: Wayfarer replied.

Mirage came upon the guard post, but there was no sound, no movement, and no energon signatures. He risked a light and found the floor stained with energon—recent. There had been a fight, and somebot died here, from the looks of things. He felt Wayfarer's hope that it had not been one of the miners.

He said, ::There are no bodies here. Decepticons leave the dead where they fall. The miners must have won the battle, to have taken them away.::

He caught a flash of endless rows of crypts deep in played-out tunnels. Among them, her teammates rested in honor.

He continued on, and finally saw a dim light. A set of heavy gates stood ajar, and as he watched, that same rumble sounded again, this time accompanied by a metallic screech. The gates closed a little more.

::Dear Primus, they breached the commons. Decloak and give them a shout. If you get caught sneaking around the miners will rip you to pieces.::

Mirage did just that. "Hello, the mine! I'm an Autobot, may I come closer?"

A gruff voice called back, "Put up your guns and keep your servos where we can see 'em! What's your designation?"

"Mirage! I'm with Wayfarer."

"Where's Elita?"

"She found clan, and I offered to come in her place. I'm Wayfarer's bonded." He paused a moment. "Wayfarer says you're Captain Stonecutter, and she's asking about Brightgold!"

"Come on up, mech. Sorry, but we can't be too careful these days. Elita-1 didn't any more get rid of the 'Cons than the Pitspawn started getting brave. This last time, they killed twelve of my bots and got into the commons before we sent them running. We won't stand up to another attack like that, and it won't be long before they're back in force."

Mirage came through the gates into a scene of chaos. The only light was from a forge and the bright blue optics of about fifty miners. They only stood about ten feet tall, but they were heavy and generally armed with swords and axes. Wayfarer said that in a fight they were as likely to transform to their digger form, they could just as easily use their mining blades to shred an enemy as cut through stone to reach a vein of ore.

Now, there were wounded, and those tending them, everywhere. Some of the bots sat vigil by their dead. They all showed unmistakable signs of long-term privation. The conditions that Wayfarer had warned him to expect had only worsened in the few years that she had been gone.

Mirage told them about Earth, about their victory over the Decepticons and about Optimus Prime's call for all Autobots to join him there.

Making the decision to leave what had been their home for hundreds of vorns was not easy, but there was no hope here. Mirage helped them load their things aboard the colony ships, and then he visited the tomb of Wayfarer's cohort, the three who had given their lives to end the threat from the Decepticons in this sector. He let her use his servo to touch theirs one last time, his voice to whisper a final farewell.

The miners stopped to pay their respects, before going to the tombs of their own ancestors and friends. They laid to rest the dead from this last battle, ten killed in the fighting and two sparkmates who had crossed over to join them once the battle was won. Then, to prevent the Acolytes from desecrating the dead, they collapsed the tunnels behind them as they left.

Wayfarer made sure Stonecutter and Captain Diamond of the _Abundance _knew the way to Earth before they set out, in case she didn't make it. Their plan was to use the first jump point, then make a few shorter unassisted jumps away from the next in the chain to confuse pursuit and stop in a yellow-star system to top off their energon before embarking on the long jump across the void between the galactic arms. From there, the last leg of their journey would take them home.

First they had to get to the jump point.

The colony ships were big, heavy and slow, not defenseless but no match for fast gunships. Wayfarer and Mirage would have to keep the fighters off them.

Mirage locked into the pilot's station. Wayfarer rose out of the shaft, followed by the two colony ships.

She depressurized her cabin. Bots did not need atmosphere. It made many things more convenient, but in a fight in vacuum, having the cabin pressurized was just asking to have any loose objects pulled towards a hole in the hull at a high rate of speed. That could turn an otherwise minor injury into a major distraction.

She cloaked, which restricted her speed because a cloak couldn't compensate for high speed maneuvers. Even so, she was able to draw far enough ahead of the colony ships to scout the way ahead. They evaded what looked like the same four ships that they had seen before, but there were six more guarding the jump point.

Wayfarer said, "Well. These are not good odds."

_"Cara_, I hope that you aren't feeling guilty on my account. I've been on borrowed time since Chicago. If I only came back from the Well of Sparks to have this time with you, what more should I ask of life?"

Wayfarer's first target was the ship nearest the jump point. She decloaked directly in front of him and opened fire. His startled wingman went down almost as quickly.

The remaining four were not as easily dealt with. Mirage took over the guns, leaving Wayfarer to concentrate on flying.

The smartship was a wily old adversary, but she was outnumbered and outgunned. Even so, Mirage managed to shoot down another one before she was hit. Something exploded in her cabin. She screamed in pain, but still managed to evade any more hits from that one. Mirage returned fire and got him off their six.

Then another one exploded, and Mirage knew he hadn't had anything to do with it.

_Pride of Iacon _bore down on the fighters, dwarfing all of them. Her mighty rail gun had just blown that unfortunate Pitspawn out of the sky, and there were a large number of miners maglocked to the outside of the ship, firing on the remaining two with their personal weapons. _Abundance _was right behind her.

That was enough for the two survivors. They made a wild anywhere-but-here jump, leaving the jump point clear.

A dozen miners kicked off the _Pride_ and transformed to ore carrier form. They surrounded Wayfarer and gently pushed her back to the ship. _Abundance_ went ahead while the miners' healer checked on her, making repairs that couldn't wait.

Wayfarer concentrated on her external sensors to distract herself from what the healer was doing.

Near the edge of her range was some huge shadow, a planet where there shouldn't be one. Something about it was wrong, horribly, terrifyingly _wrong._

It. Changed. Course.

::Mirage, do you see that?::

::Yes, but what is it?::

::I don't know and I don't want to stay here to find out! Captain Stonecutter, jump us out of here now!::

The captain ordered her rescuers to lock her to the hull, in case she was too badly injured to hold on. Mirage's presence surrounded her consciousness, drawing her to him, away from the pain of her wounds.

The jump point activated, putting lightyears between them and whatever nightmare was behind them. Sometime during the jump, Wayfarer dropped into a healing stasis lock.

Mirage asked the healer, "How is she?"

"She'll live, if she wants to," Fixer said.

"What does that mean!"

"She's seeker-kin. They all have a spark-deep need to fly. That explosion did damage that can't be repaired. I can put in some bracing to make her more comfortable, but nothing that would hold through any kind of stress. Grounding a seeker is the worst thing you can do to one of them. They'll choose to offline themselves every time. I've never seen one who had a sparkmate before, though. If anything gives her a reason to want to live, it'll be you."

"Even in a new frame?"

"You have the resources to do that?"

"Yes."

"If you can honestly promise her that your healers can put her in something that can fly, she'll hold onto that," Fixer said.

Mirage vowed that, one way or another, he would see to it that Wayfarer took the skies again.

They had been orbiting some star for about twenty joors before she woke up. Between Fixer's work and her own self-repairs, the pain had eased enough that she could think. Her diagnostics sent her into a spiral of despair.

Mirage caught her, with a memory of reawakening in a new frame after he had been offlined. "Before we left, they were talking about building aerial frames. If they haven't yet, they will when they know you need one."

With a spark-deep certainty, she understood what this thing they had really meant. Mirage would do everything in his considerable ability to give her a life worth living, and if he failed, he would walk into the Well with her without a backwards glance. Given the choice between the skies, and a life rich with that kind of love—if she never had the skies again, maybe life as a grounder wouldn't be so bad after all.

*-T-F-Rising*

(December 2018, Earth)

One morning, Shimmer called Elita to Ops to inform her team leader of an incoming transmission. It was Wayfarer with the news that she was leading two ore carriers full of miners in-system. They had just completed transiting the last jump point and their ETA was three weeks.

An ore carrier was a huge slow vessel that would take up far too much room on Diego Garcia. They decided to have the miners land on the captured asteroid and shuttle them down. Black Team went up to meet their friends.

She rushed to Wayfarer when she saw her injuries. ::Sister, what happened?::

Wayfarer uploaded her memory of the fight at the jump point. ::Do you recognize those ships, Prime?::

::No, Wayfarer, they look Cybertronian, but like nothing I ever saw. Are they smartships?::

::I don't think so. They fly like drones.::

::Well, that's something anyway.::

::I'll never fly again, Sister,:: Wayfarer said.

::You will if I have anything to say about it. Don't give up.::

::How could I give up when I've found my sparkmate? My Sister, my Prime, will you do us the honor of blessing our bond?::

::It will be one of the greatest joys of my life,:: Elita replied. ::First we need to get you into a new frame. Let me get Ratchet to take a look at you.::

::Sister, if it's possible, could I be a flier instead of a smartship this time?::

Elita's fields danced with teasing humor as she glanced at Mirage. ::That might be possible.::

Wayfarer asked, ::Are you sure it's all right, Prime? I know we haven't seen the last of those drones. And whatever that other sensor signature was-I'll be honest, it scared the pit out of me.::

::You need a new frame, period. There is a seeker protoform available now. Even if you were eventually going to be a smartship again, you wouldn't want to sit in a holding container in Medbay until a vessel protoform was ready,:: the ebony and chrome Prime teased.

::No, Sister,:: she laughed.

::There are five of us scouts now, including Mirage. We'll need a bigger ship and a good pilot, so everything will work out fine. I'll get out of the way and let Ratchet take a look at you. You're in good hands. Try not to worry about trouble that never may come here.::

Elita made room for Ratchet and went outside to watch the sun rise over the Earth.

A crowd of miner bots had gathered between the two great hulking ore carriers, the _Pride of Iacon_ and the _Abundance_. It was a happy reunion, but she was saddened to see that losses had been so great. It was more than fortunate that Optimus had sent his message when he had. Otherwise, they might have fought to the last bot, still believing themselves to be the last survivors of Cybertron.

She watched, deeply troubled, as the new day's dawn raced across the ocean to awaken Diego Garcia. Anything that scared Wayfarer that badly, Elita took very seriously.

Back on Earth, her disquiet brought Optimus out of recharge. ::What is it, Elita?::

She uploaded her memory of the conversation with Wayfarer. ::What have I brought down on us? I've as well as led it here.::

He quoted her own words back at her. ::Try not to worry about trouble that may never come here.::

::It will come, love. I said that only for Wayfarer to settle into her new protoform and enjoy this time with Mirage. There are so few jump points still operational. The ones that still are out there had might as well be signposts. The only question is whether that monstrosity has its own space-fold technology powerful enough to jump across the void between the galactic arms. Nothing that size can actually use the jump points. That will tell how much time we have.::

::If it does come here, we will be ready.::

::From one threat to another.:: Her voice was soaked with spark deep weariness.

::Come home, my love. If trouble is coming, it's coming. We face it together. The humans put a great deal of value on coming home for Christmas.::

::You know I count the breems until we're together again.:: Elita smiled in spite of herself, filled with the warmth of him no matter the distance.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Rolling Home by Rednex. /A.N._


	32. The Lesson

(Chapter 24—The Lesson)

(disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2019)

Optimus watched with Elita as Ironhide taught the five largest sparklings. Since the arrival of the miners six months ago, things had shifted from the peacetime mindset that had followed the Battle of Chicago to a sense of preparation. Ironhide was not trying to scare the sparklings, they thought they were learning skills for the sake of learning. But they were being taught what Lennox called SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. The human children were learning the same things, sometimes in a separate class but most of the time the whole tribe together.

The younglings and the adults knew they prepared for war.

Optimus feared that it would not be enough. "I've done all I can to impress on the United Nations that we are not alone in this universe. Sooner or later, if not this one, then some other threat will find us. If they continue to act like new sparklings squabbling over something shiny, this world has no chance."

"I believe if they see a threat they will unite against it," Elita said.

"By the time they see it coming, it will be too late for all of us," he rumbled.

Elita nodded. "Beloved, I can only have faith that Primus did not spare this handful of us only to abandon us now."

Starry and Shaker were sparring. Both of them were very good for their small size, but it was no wonder considering how long Ironhide had been teaching them under the guise of rough-housing. Shaker was now much bigger and stronger, but Starry just would not quit if Ironhide was watching. When Shaker tried to use his greater mass to pin her, she put everything into it and kicked him hard enough with both peds to knock him over backwards. Immediately she jumped onto him, her practice dagger at his throat.

Hide tapped her out and she let go. Shaker got up. "You might be little but you sure are mean," he grinned.

Hide told him, "Anybot is armed till you're sure they aren't."

"Yes, Team Leader." Shaker wasn't embarrassed to lose a sparring match. Of them all, he knew there was more to it than the adults were letting on. Most of the sparklings rarely if ever accessed their memories of their lives before coming here. Shaker did, he remembered very well how bad things could get, and he had figured out the adults wouldn't be teaching them this stuff unless they were afraid the tribe might need it. So if he got knocked on his aft and "killed," that was fine if Starry learned from it.

Optimus nodded approval. Starry was learning to be a warrior, and in time she would be a very dangerous one. Shaker was already a leader and he became a better one every day.

Ironhide signaled Hot Rod. The three of them were under a tree, apparently minding their own business but they had this set up ahead of time. The three of them suddenly rushed the sparklings.

Things did not go according to plan. Dragonfly flashed back on something, nobody really knew what but it wasn't hard to guess. She screamed for her mother, in pure terror.

Annie and John had been with Lennox shooting a paintball gun. "Those big aftheads!" She shot Bluestreak right between the optics and the two of them came running.

Ironhide told Blue, ::You're dead. Go down and stay down.::

Skyrocket got his panicked sister out of the line of fire. Starry went right for Hot Rod. He had a practice sword and she knew if he hit her once, that would be it. She pulled her paintball gun out of subspace and fired away, forcing him to defend. Suddenly he had Shaker on him too, and John was also shooting paintballs. Shaker got in a lucky shot with his practice dagger and Hot Rod went down too.

Kylie took full advantage of getting lost in the confusion. Her first idea had been to grab Dragonfly, because she could still overpower the littlest seeker hand to hand and most of the others were too strong for that now. But she wasn't about to drag a traumatized kid back into it. Shimmer was already hurrying to her daughter's side.

Instead, she sneaked up behind Firecracker and held her gun to his head. "On the ground, all of you, or I'll shoot!"

Everyone did—except Annie. She took aim and stood firm. "Not unless whatever you're doing is worth dying for," she replied.

Kylie said, "Yeah, but I'm a Pretender and I'm more scared of my boss than I am of you."

Annie didn't flinch. "You can be dead for _sure_ now, or _maybe _dead later if your boss ever catches you."

Kylie realized there was no way out—if she shot Firecracker, Annie would definitely kill her. If she did let the little mech go, Annie would probably shoot her anyway. "Give me your word nobody will kill me, and I'll surrender."

"As long as you really surrender, yes, I promise, but you better not pull anything funny!"

She let Firecracker go and laid down her paintball gun.

Ironhide asked, "What would you do now, Annie?"

"I—I'd make her drop everything she has subspaced to make sure she hasn't got any more guns, then if none of the bots already called for help, I'd have somebody do that. And I'd have somebody see if those two are really dead or just playing possum."

"OK, game over. That's how fast a plan can go straight to Pit. You three got overconfident and got your afts kicked by a bunch of sparklings. You don't always get accurate intel about how many hostiles there are, or if one of the ones you don't know about is a sniper.

You littles did great, and the best thing you did—after _surviving_—was capture this punk Pretender. Now we can find out where they came from and who sent them."

Optimus said of Annie, "That little nut didn't fall far from the tree."

Annie flushed red as a beet, both at the teasing and the praise. Being compared to her parents was a compliment indeed, even if she did just get called a little nut. "Thank you, Prime."

Lennox realized Annie was shaking a little. "Are you OK, sweetie?"

"Yes, Daddy. But she could've not believed I really would take her prisoner and shot Firecracker anyway. I don't know if I could've really made the shot."

"Bad things can happen," he agreed quietly. "But if you use your head, they're less likely to. And in real life, if these really had been three bad guys, with the Primes and Hide and myself here, I can promise you they wouldn't have got anywhere near you. We will keep you safe."

Annie put her arms around him and Lennox hugged her. He had caught a glimpse of the woman that she was going to be, and he was damn proud, but she was still a little kid. Both the littles and the younglings had learned a lot.

All of them were OK except Dragonfly, but she was calming down now that it was all over and Shimmer had her. Still, she had magna-locked to her mother, something she was really too old to do.

"What scared you, sweetspark?"

"When big bots run at you and yell, somebot gets kicked or stomped on."

"Not here they don't. I'd shoot them."

"Promise, Mommy?"

"Pit, yes, I promise. Nobot would ever really hurt you unless they came through me first." Her tone promised hell to pay if _anyone_ ever tried it.

Bluestreak grabbed a hose to wash the paint off himself. "That was a good shot, Annie."

"Thanks, Blue."

"We were pretty stupid not to take you and John into account."

"Yeah, you didn't really think we'd run _away_ when we heard Dragonfly scream, did you?"

Lennox said, "Annie, I don't think you realize how good you did. If that had been a real rifle, you'd have definitely killed anyone but a front-liner, and you'd have blinded anyone. This was just a game, but in real life, these other two would have been thinking twice about running up at a rifleman who just took one of them out. They probably would have dove for cover. You kids could very well have gotten away and got some help before the hostage situation ever happened. I'm proud of you."

"Daddy, now we know Dragonfly might freak out if something happens, what should we do?"

"What else happened?"

"Uh—Skyrocket got her out of there."

"Right. You just did the right thing this time, but in another situation the main thing to keep in mind would have been to cover their retreat. If you'd had more experience, you probably would have seen the pretender sneaking up on Firecracker, too. I think he was in your line of fire, though, so it might not have mattered."

Ironhide nodded. "Firecracker, are you OK?"

"Sure, Dad. I had guns pointed at me before and that wasn't even a real gun," he said. But his voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked. "It's just—if it had been a real bad guy instead of just Kylie, she could've shot Annie instead of me."

"As soon as she pulled the gun off you, Annie would have dropped her like a rock, and even if she missed you wouldn't have just stood there and let her get shot," Ironhide assured him. "But you got to pay attention to where _all_ the bad guys get to—especially the sneaky little ones."

Firecracker nodded.

Once Ironhide let them go, the mechlings and Kylie made themselves scarce. Ironhide and Lennox snickered as they watched the teens make tracks. Lennox said, "They won't forget that in any hurry."

"Yeah, next time they'll try making a plan first," Ironhide agreed.

"I feel like I should yell at Annie and John for not getting away when they had the chance—but, damn it, we raised those kids right."

"It wouldn't do you any good to yell," Ironhide said. "Those kids are a cohort or I'm a fraggin' idiot. Think back. They coordinated everything, even Annie and John."

Lennox nodded. "Should we train for that, or just leave them be?"

"Sparkling bonds don't always take. If they're still that close five or ten years from now, then reconsider. But for now let's just let them be kids as much as we can."

Lennox nodded. "Is Dragonfly OK?"

Ironhide's optics dimmed as he checked with Shimmer. "She's calmed down. She flashed back on the 'Cons yelling and chasing them. Nothin' good ever came of that."

"Poor kid."

"Best thing that could happen. It didn't happen when it would've got her offlined. Now, she can get past it." Ironhide didn't have to say she would have plenty of help. They had just been through the same thing with Bumblebee, after all.

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus and Elita drove out to the point, but when they saw some people up there, they transformed and took a side trail into the jungle. Elita said, "They're just sparklings."

"I know," Optimus replied.

"Annabelle Lennox would have reacted the same way in a real situation. Killed one person, got into a standoff with another. She's just _twelve_."

"I know that, too. If it had been a real situation, they would have survived. She's had Will and Ironhide teaching her to survive her entire life."

Elita nodded. "They are all but warriors already. The two humans, when they heard Dragonfly scream for Shimmer, before they realized it was an exercise..."

"I saw. It will be impossible to keep them completely safe if the island ever comes under attack."

Elita nodded. "We will have to assign them to do something that would keep them out of any fighting. Otherwise they will find something to do on their own."

"Defend Medbay, if there were any patients in there. That would put them under Ratchet's supervision. Otherwise, the NEST dependents, though I hardly trust _them_ not to find a way to make themselves useful."

"We can't stop the adults, or even younglings, from defending their home, should they so choose. There are always going to be smaller sparklings who will need protection," Elita said.

Optimus agreed, though he hoped their plans would never be needed.

Elita couldn't help remembering Mirage's tale of Darkmoon's Acolytes breaching the miners' commons. This was not an underground fortress with limited ways in and out. It was an island at the bottom of a gravity well.

Optimus reminded her of Mjolnir. They could defend against an attack from space from there, if necessary, if they had enough warning to react to it.

"That's a big if."

"I know. The miners are working several claims out there now. They're likely to notice anything coming insystem if it gets through our sensor net."

They stopped at the ruins of some old building. It was impossible to tell what it once had been because there was nothing left but the foundation, now kept cleared of vines by those who found it a convenient place to stop for a while.

Elita asked, "Is it so wrong to pray for peace? I hoped..."

"So did I," her sparkmate replied.

"Bad enough that we couldn't solve our own problems. Now we have to drag another generation into it? I can't help but think we've failed them if we have to teach them to kill," she said quietly.

"Not if we teach them what's worth fighting _for_," he replied. "We'll never be able to make the world a perfect place for them. But we'll do our best to leave it a _better_ place, and we can teach them how to face the challenges that come their way."

She rested her head on his shoulder. Suddenly she started laughing in spite of herself.

::?::

She replied with an image of the younglings' embarrassment at being outdone by the little kids.

Optimus laughed too. "That was a learning experience all around."

"You know, Hot Rod reminds me a lot of you, when we were that age."

"Good Primus," he laughed.

"You turned out all right."

"Do you think so, femme?"

"Yes I do," she smiled.

They stayed on the path through the jungle as they walked back home, and for that little while, it was as if there was no one else in the universe.

*-T-F-Rising*

Kylie lay on Hot Rod's hood as he sulked in his alt form. They had retreated to their spot near the short pier. Kylie said, "We'd might as well just build a hut here. We're never going to be able to show our faces in the commons again."

Blue said, "Well, it wasn't like we were about to go all-out against a buncha little sparklings, right? I mean, one of them coulda got hurt."

"Yeah, we were going easy on 'em," Hot Rod agreed.

Kylie tossed a banana peel to a crab. "That's our story and we're stickin' to it."

They watched the crab drag its prize back into the weeds under the trees.

Hot Rod said, "We got our afts kicked—no, _handed_ to us—by little sparklings because we just ran up there like a pack of fools."

Kylie said, "Well...if we hadn't they wouldn't have learned anything. We just would've scared them all the way we did Dragonfly."

"That isn't the point. If it'd been a real mission to capture someone, we failed. Blue and I would be dead, and you'd have been captured."

"No. I wouldn't have surrendered to the 'Cons. I'd have gone down fighting. You haven't heard some of the stories I have about what they'd do to any humans they bothered to capture. A lot of the guys used to say they'd save their last round, y'know?"

"Yeah. Don't ever do that, Kylie, there'd be too many people trying to get you out."

"I guess it would depend on how much damage I could do if I couldn't keep my mouth shut."

"Primus," Bluestreak said. "I have enough trouble keeping things to myself when I'm _not_ being tortured."

Hot Rod said, "Look, nobody's getting captured because we'll never do anything this stupid again!"

They were all willing to agree with that.

They waited until late to go home, and thought to sneak in the back door, but Sides caught them getting some energon and started teasing them about losing to the kids. The resulting scuffle knocked over a couch. Somebody opened a door on the second floor of the human apartments and flung a boot at them. "Shut the frag up, it's oh-fraggin'-one-hundred!"

They all scattered, including Sideswipe.

*-T-F-Rising*

Starry and Annie were lying on Starry's berth when they heard the thump from the commons.

"What do you think that was?" Annie asked.

"Twins," Starry said, not bothering to unshutter her optics.

"Yeah."

"Did they wake you?"

"No, I had a bad dream."

"What about?"

"The thing today, only it was 'Cons. I had to take the shot, only I missed, and I hit Firecracker," Annie said.

"It scared me too. I didn't have the nerve to close with Hot Rod."

"He has a sword and he's bigger than you. You'd be dumb to close with him."

"Shaker did and he won."

"They're both going to be front-liners. It's how they think."

"I guess."

"Shaker couldn't have won if you and John hadn't been shooting."

"Yeah." Annie pretended to be asleep until Starry went back into recharge, but then she went out in the lounge and climbed up on the window sill. She sat there looking out over the ocean.

Ironhide wasn't sure what woke him until he got up, careful not to wake Chromia, and found Annie in the lounge.

He didn't have to lift her to his shoulder anymore, she could easily climb. But once she got up there, she snuggled up against his neck the same way she had when she was little.

"What's the matter, Little Bit?"

She smiled at the old nickname. "Can't sleep. Bad dreams." She told him about it.

Ironhide reassured her, "You wouldn't have missed at that range. It was just a nightmare."

"I was shaking. My aim was everywhere. Mom could've—"

"Your mom's been a lot of places and done a lot of things. Don't think she doesn't get scared. She has the training and experience to get the job done anyway. You've never had to think about what you'd do if somebody had a gun on your friend. Of course it scared you. But y'know what?"

"No, what?"

"Nobody else knew you were scared. That's why Kylie surrendered. She figured you had the situation under control and she didn't."

"I don't want to try to sleep again yet. I don't want to dream again that somebody gets killed."

"Don't blame you. Those ain't fun." Careful not to dislodge her from her perch, he went out back and sat on a concrete wall. They watched the lights out over the harbor for a long while, until Annie fell asleep in spite of herself. He just let her rest there until it started to get light and people started moving around, and Chromia wanted to know where they were.

Diego Garcia woke up for another day.


	33. Walkabout Part 1

(Chapter 25—Walkabout Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Part 1)

_(A.N.: Special thanks to wacko12, who helped me out a lot with an idea for this story arc. This chapter contains content which might be a trigger for anyone who has child abuse issues. It doesn't go into a lot of gory details, but anyone this applies to should be aware of it. /A.N.)_

(2019—Alice Springs, Australia; Diego Garcia)

One morning in August, Mearing saw Kylie Anders on her way back to Wheeljack's workshop. "Kylie! Could I have a moment?"

Kylie took the stairs two at a time. "What do you need, Ambassador?"

"Remember when we were doing a search to see if you have any relatives?"

"Yes?"

"You did have. Your father had an uncle who disappeared in the 1980s. We've traced him to Australia, where he passed away six years ago. You're the only heir, and he left quite a considerable investment portfolio. However, he also owned some real estate. You need to go there and take care of the paperwork and capital gains taxes before you can inherit. You'll meet a solicitor in Alice Springs who will guide you through everything and show you the property so that you can decide whether to keep it or not."

"Wait, I'm going to Australia? When? Do I have to go by myself?"

"Yes, whenever you're ready, and if you want to take your sidekicks with you that would be fine. You'll be taken to the airport in Alice Springs. Take camping equipment and winter clothing with you. No one's lived in the house all this time, so it might not be fit to stay in."

"OK. I don't know anything about inheriting a house. Is this lawyer reliable?"

"Yes, he should be. I located him through the State Department."

"Thanks. What papers do I need to take with me?"

"Birth certificate, passport, and your Diego Garcia permanent resident's card." Mearing provided her with the birth certificate and everyone's passports, as well as a credit card and some Australian cash. "You're the treasurer of this little expedition, since it will be easier for you to deal with money. Check in every day so we'll know you're all right, more often if you have any questions."

"Yes, Ambassador. Thank you for taking care of all this for me."

"Be careful."

Kylie went back to the lab. "We're going to Australia!"

"Why?" Bluestreak asked.

"Because I had a great-uncle there and I'm his only heir. I have to go take care of the business and see what I want to do with his house. You don't _have_ to go—"

Both of them immediately protested that they wanted to go. Kylie said, "Que, do you want to go with us?"

"Oh, my, no, not unless you need me to. I have so much to do here."

"What can we help you with before we leave? We'll be gone about a week, it sounds like, so we could try to get ahead on some of the work."

Wheeljack checked the datapad where he kept his jobs list. "There's nothing here that can't wait. Nothing urgent from medical, no major repairs needed anywhere else. Finish your classwork for today, and then we'll take up where you left off when you get back. Be careful and stay out of trouble."

*-T-F-Rising*

Wayfarer and Mirage were waiting for them aboard the Xanthium II when they dashed aboard. Hot Rod apologized, "There was a last-minute mix-up with our permits."

Mirage said, "It was a lot easier when we just scanned a new license plate every so often!"

Kylie muttered something about diplomatic incidents and invoking the wrath of Mearing. She found a seat and tossed Hot Rod her backpack to subspace. It was a four hour flight aboard the _Xan II, _most of which the teenagers spent sleeping.

It was cold when they touched down. Kylie was very used to a warm tropical climate. She put on her coat and jumped into Hot Rod's front seat as soon as he transformed. They watched the _Xan II_ take off, on its way to Tokyo.

Alice Springs wasn't that big. The motel wasn't that hard to find. Kylie checked in and got her key, then turned on the heat in her room. Blue decided to get some recharge time in, taking up two spaces to save one for Hot Rod. They went in search of some late dinner or early breakfast for Kylie. Nothing in town was open except for a convenience store with a gas station.

Hot Rod waited while Kylie went in to buy some food. He amused himself by scanning the local radio and TV while she was in there. There was a lot of static. He wondered if there was a storm nearby.

He remembered they were supposed to check in. ::Ops, this is Hot Rod. We made it in OK. Kylie's buying some snacks then we're going back to the hotel for a while till the lawyer's office opens.::

Georgie replied, ::_What? _-can't-breaking up!::

::Sorry! Radio and TV are all messed up too! I'll have Kylie call you from her hotel when we get back.::

::—OK. Sorry!::

Kylie came out with a sack. She got out a candy bar and a can of soda, then tied the bag shut so it wouldn't spill cans in his subspace hold. "Brrr! It's cold here!"

"Communications are all messed up. I told Georgie you'd call from the hotel land line when we get back."

She took a bite of her candy bar. "K."

When they got back, Bluestreak moved over to make room for Hot Rod. The static made it pretty much impossible to carry on a conversation without talking out loud. Which they figured would be a bad idea in a public parking lot. Bored, they settled into recharge.

Kylie got out her new credit card to call home.

"Ops."

"Hi, Georgie, it's Kylie. The weather must be acting up cause the guys' radios are all messed up. There's no TV either. But we're here OK and I'm at the motel. It's room 111. Tell Mearing we checked in, would you?"

"Sure."

Kylie got a quick shower and went to bed.

The next morning, they went to the lawyer's office. Kylie signed papers until she thought her hand would fall off, then the lawyer printed her out a map to her great-uncle's place and gave her the keys. "Watch out for snakes out there."

"Snakes!" She exclaimed.

"It's Australia, what do you expect?"

"I don't know, there aren't any snakes on Diego Garcia. Are there lots of them here?"

"Yes, and they get in empty buildings, so look before you put your hands anywhere."

"Yikes. Thanks for the heads up."

"My card is in that paperwork. Give me a call when you decide what to do with the place."

"OK, I'll have to call from my hotel. My cell phone doesn't work."

"Oh, yeah, that's been going on for about a week. Everyone thinks it's something they're doing out at the Air Force base."

"Oh. Thanks!"

Kylie went out and they headed out of town. The map led them out of town towards a mountain range and through a pass. Soon after they reached the other side, they took a side road and drove for a long while through beautiful but rugged countryside. They only passed a few farm houses, but lots and lots of sheep. Finally, as it was getting dark, they came to another farm, this one was all overgrown and the windows were broken out.

Kylie walked up to the front door and turned the key. The lock wouldn't work until she sprayed WD-40 in it.

When she opened the door, some big bird squawked and flew out at her. She yelped and got out of its way. "God bless!" She yelled. Hot Rod and Bluestreak were laughing at her.

She turned on her flashlight, remembering the lawyer's warning. All she needed was to grab a hibernating snake and wake it up.

She took a couple steps-and her foot went through the floorboard. She got her balance, got her foot out of the hole, and got herself out of the ramshackle building before anything else happened. "I've seen enough! This floor's caving in!"

Hot Rod asked, "What do you want to do, go back to town?"

"You guys must be as tired as I am. Let's just stay here and go back in the morning."

"I wonder if one of the farmers would let Kylie use their phone to call home?"

"Probably. You take her, Blue, I'm going to check out these outbuildings. If one of them isn't about to fall in, we could get out of the wind."

"OK."

It was a long way back to the nearest farm. By the time they got there, it was dark. Kylie knocked at the door.

An old lady came up. "Hello, young lady. Are you here by yourself?"

"Yes, ma'am. Could I use your phone? My great-uncle was Harry Anders, I inherited his place. I'm supposed to call home every night, but my phone isn't working."

"Well, I suppose that would be OK! Come in, my phone is right over there. Would you like a nice cuppa while you're here?"

"Thanks, that sounds nice." Not wanting to run up the nice old lady's phone bill, she used her card again to make the call. Sam was on duty. "How's it going, did you find your sheep farm?"

"Yeah, but I'm going to sell it. The place is falling apart and the lawyer said there are snakes. And when I opened the door, this bird flew out in my face! Besides, it gets _cold _here in the winter!"

Sam laughed. "Sounds like a pretty good story anyway."

"Yeah. I'm going to talk to the lawyer again tomorrow then try to find out a little about my uncle. Maybe put something on his grave. We'll probably leave the day after, unless there's some reason the lawyer would need me here longer to sign more papers."

"All right. Be careful around those rickety old buildings."

"Sure thing. See you in a couple days, Sam."

"Bye, Kylie."

The old lady brought a teapot. The hot tea was welcome, and she was able to tell her a little about her great-uncle. He had followed a girl home, married her and lived here for over thirty years. The two had no children, but they had seemed happy enough. They had passed within days of each other. The lady told Kylie where to find the churchyard where they were buried.

Kylie went back out to Bluestreak. "Sorry! The lady who lives here knew my great-uncle. It sounds like he had a pretty good life, I guess."

"That's something, anyway, isn't it?"

"Yeah. We'd better get back before Hot Rod comes looking for us."

"I tried to call him but whatever that interference is, it's worse here than it was in town," Blue said.

"So much for the lawyer's idea it was coming from the Air Force base. We're further from it here than we were in town."

"It isn't the weather, either. It's clearing up."

"Great. Twenty degrees colder."

Finally they got back to the farm, and pulled into the barnyard. Kylie pulled up her coat's hood before getting out. Blue transformed. "Hot Rod?"

Bluestreak looked around and couldn't locate him. "He's probably hiding in one of these buildings so he can jump out at us." He headed cautiously towards the nearest building. If Hot Rod wanted to play House on Haunted Hill, two could play that game.

Kylie snickered. Then her sneaker squelched in something wet.

They were in the middle of a damn desert! What the hell—?

She fished her flashlight out of her pocket. That was—_no! _She stuck her finger in it and smelled to make sure. "BLUE! There's energon over here, a lot of it! Ohmigod!"

He came running. "Oh slag! Hot Rod, if this is a prank it isn't funny! Get your aft out here right now!"

Kylie ran her hand through her hair. The plot of every slasher movie she'd ever seen was running through her mind. They looked in all the buildings that were big enough for Hot Rod to be hiding in, to no avail. Then they shined their lights around the barnyard, looking for any clue.

"Kylie, there's a big shell casing over here-it doesn't look like it's from an explosive round but I don't know what it is."

"I found some tracks but-come look, I think they're too big for you or Hot Rod to have made them. And there's some blood here too."

"He wouldn't have attacked a human."

"It doesn't look like that. There's not enough to kill somebody. More like he staggered into them or something. Oh, God."

"Look here, I think they dragged him. These tracks are from a big truck with double tires on the back, and these marks, like they dragged him into it."

"Like a flatbed and a winch."

"I think. One of them must have had some kind of accident while they were loading him on the truck." He ran down to the road. The truck had gone the other way from the farmhouse with the phone.

"Blue—by the time we go back to the phone and call for help, and they get here—"

"—Hot Rod could be dead!"

They looked at each other, then Blue transformed and Kylie jumped in without a word needing said. They headed after the truck.

Blue said, "He's still leaking energon. It isn't a lot."

"There was a _lot_ back there!"

"I know, but listen, what if he's doing it on purpose so we can find him?"

"Be careful in case they turn off."

An hour later, they did just that. A rusty gate blocked off a private road.

"Blue."

"What?"

"Hot Rod has my stuff. As soon as they make him turn out his hold, they'll know there's a human with him. They'll be expecting somebody to be looking for him."

"Not unless they know about me. They might think you're stranded back there."

"Good if they do, but we should count on them waiting for us."

"Let's get off the road. That's how they'd expect us to come."

They climbed over the fence and went about fifty yards from the private road before they turned to walk parallel to it.

Lights in the distance sent them scrambling for cover. They lay down in some rocks to break up Blue's outline. The flatbed rumbled by on its way back to the main road.

They walked for another hour, then came to a steep hill. At the top, they dropped the way they had been taught and crawled to the ridge, so no one would be skylined. Even at night, there was enough moonlight that someone might see them. They were looking down on a house trailer and a large metal building. There was a guy with a rifle standing by the barn door.

"Blue. How does that rule about harming humans go? Does it apply to me?"

"No."

"Good. We might get out of this alive if my hands aren't tied," Kylie said. "I have to do something about that guard before we can do anything else. Stay here until I take care of him. If I get caught, well, we'll have to hope they don't know you're here."

"Kylie, be careful."

She nodded once, then disappeared into the bush. A little while later, she paused at the corner of the barn—and threw her knife. The guard dropped. She ran over to him, checked to be sure he was dead, then grabbed her knife and his rifle. She dragged his body around the side of the building, then waved Bluestreak in.

She saw light shining through cracks in the door, and sneaked open to peek inside.

There were two men in there, who had Hot Rod chained face down to eye bolts set in the concrete floor. All the armor was off his back. One of them leaned over him with a drill.

She had never heard a bot scream in agony before. Oh, she'd heard modem-noise Cybertronian yelling before, but never a sound like that. And she never wanted to hear it again. She kicked the door and rolled inside. Both of the men opened fire on the door, but they didn't have time to correct their aim before she shot them both.

"Hot Rod!" She ran to him and looked for the keys, but before she found them, Bluestreak pulled a sword and cut the locks off.

"Kylie, keep an optic out in case those guys in the truck come back!"

She ran to the door. "If we can find out what's blocking the radio-"

Hot Rod said, "No! Not till we can get out of here, they'll know if the interference stops then they'll all be all over us."

"What did they do to you?"

"That freeze ray thing. Then they just opened a port and drained my energon. Gave me a little when we got back here—after they tied me up! After that—I don't know what all they did but it hurt like the Pit."

"Primus! Why didn't you shut off your sensors?"

"Because they threatened to kill me if I did!"

"Sick fucks!" Kylie said.

"I knew you'd get me out so I just did everything I could to stay alive. Can you see what they did to my back?"

"It just looks like they drilled a hole in your shoulder brace. I don't see any other damage anywhere. Whatever they did it's self-repaired by now.

Oh sweet holy Well."

"What? What did they do?" Hot Rod yelled, trying to look over his shoulder.

"No, no, nothing. But, Hot Rod—"

Kylie asked, "Blue, what's the fuckin' _matter?"_

_"Nothing!" _Bluestreak hardlined to his friend to upload an image the interference wouldn't let him send wirelessly.

Hot Rod said, "That can't be—you're glitched! There's no fraggin' way!"

"You mean you never knew you were a potential Prime?"

"No! I still don't!"

Kylie screamed, "I don't care if you're Santa Claus, get the lead out so we can get the fuck out of here before more of those guys come back!"

That got them moving. Blue gave Hot Rod a cube of energon, then helped him with his back armor while he drank it. Hot Rod grabbed all his stuff from his subspace hold and put it back, Kylie might need her camping gear before this was over with. They looked for whatever was jamming everything, but couldn't find it.

They lost their nerve to hang around here any longer and just took off as fast as they could go, in the opposite direction that the truck had gone. They got to a road eventually, and didn't slow down until they almost ran a guy off the road. They left him cursing about damn bloody hoons and kept going till they got far enough away to call for help. Then they got off-road again and hid until they saw the _Xan II _and the _Venture _coming in. A half-coherent call about people torturing younglings had brought out Red Team, Blue Team and half of NEST. Ratchet scanned Hot Rod. "I won't say you're OK after what they put you through, but you're not seriously hurt."

Alicia was examining Kylie. "What happened?"

"You need to call the cops. I killed three guys. Two of them were shooting at me, but one was a guard I had to take out. They'll charge me with murder for that."

"The _hell _they will." Alicia wrapped a blanket around her and let her climb in Hot Rod's driver's seat.

The interference suddenly went down. Elita reported ::LZ Beta secure. Six humans in custody.::

Optimus asked, ::Is that flatbed there?::

::Negative.::

::It's got to have energon all over it. Come down here and see if you can track it. I want _all_ these people.:: Nobody had heard that tone of voice since Chicago.

Elita replied, ::On my way. The rest of you, stay here.::

Hot Rod listened to all of that and wondered how anybody in their right mind could think a nobody like him could ever be one of _them. _Was that why these people had kidnapped him? Or had that been blind bad luck, the wrong place at the wrong time? What about Cassidor? Had that been the wrong place at the wrong time also, or had it been targeted because somebody had known a potential Prime was there? Had his clan died because of him?

It took Elita twenty minutes to find the flatbed truck, abandoned and burned out. Footprints around it disappeared at the edge of the road.

The Australian army got out there soon after. Ratchet stepped between them and the kids. He told them in no uncertain terms that no one was talking to them until one of the Primes was here. Ratchet almost never threw his rank around, but when he did, he got results. They backed off.

_Xan II _arrived with Optimus Prime. He spoke to the Aussies, then to the kids, then gave them permission to answer the soldiers' questions.

After that they were free to go. They ended up aboard Venture, sticking as close together as they possibly could, too miserable and shaken up to be aware of much. They didn't start to relax until they landed on Diego Garcia. The adults closed around them like a living wall all the way from the airfield up to the complex, then they were taken straight into Medbay.

(Continued in Part 2)


	34. Walkabout Part 2

(Walkabout Part 2)

Nobody asked them anything else until Ratchet got done examining Hot Rod. Kylie and Bluestreak stuck to Hot Rod like glue. It would be a while before they left him unguarded.

He gave Prime the image of the sigil carved into his back brace, right where that psychopath had been drilling. ::What does this mean for me now?::

::Primus willing, nothing at all for a few vorns,:: Optimus assured him. ::Right now, you need to finish growing up.::

::Yes, Prime.:: Relief and exhaustion filled his voice. ::They aren't going to arrest Kylie, are they?::

Prime felt a new, strong sibling bond between Hot Rod and Bluestreak. Though Cybertronian senses couldn't detect it, he was quite sure Kylie was their sister now as well. ::Of course not. She did what she had to do in order to rescue you. Those people are dangerous criminals.::

::Who are they? Why did they do this?::

Optimus Prime didn't have answers for that yet, but he certainly intended to find some. ::Let me worry about that, before Ratchet starts throwing wrenches.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Aloud, he said, "All of you did well. Kylie, you are not in any legal trouble. The exigent circumstances were such that your actions were seen as justified. I regret that you were placed in such a situation, but sometimes warriors must kill. Those men made their own choices."

"Yes, Prime."

Mearing was waiting when he left medical. "We know they set this up, so I tried to trace the source of the information that led us to Kylie's great-uncle in the first place. Dutch tracked it back to a computer in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Simmons' ex-partner is now a private investigator. He went there to ask a few questions and found the place sanitized."

"This was actually well planned. Ratchet believes they were studying our self-repair capabilities. There was no reason for them to risk capturing an adult for that. Their mistake was in underestimating the younglings."

"They may have had another motivation as well. Kylie is now a very wealthy young woman. If she had met with an unfortunate accident, my guess is they would have waited a little while, and then another so-called heir would have appeared."

"What do we know about these men?"

"They're all recent military. They were all at Fort Hood after 2011. So was half the army—Fort Hood is the largest military base in the US. We're still digging into their financials, known associates, and everything else we can. The Pentagon is cooperating and conducting their own investigation as well. We got foot soldiers, Prime, and so far they aren't leading us any higher up the chain of command."

"Simmons should be having the time of his life."

Mearing barked a laugh. Her husband had finally caught the trail of an honest-to-God conspiracy, and he had everyone's blessing to chase it to ground. But the humor didn't reach her eyes.

"Charlotte?"

"These bastards used me to lead those kids right down the garden path. They have no _idea_ how thoroughly they screwed the pooch!"

He had seen her angry before, but this was something else again. This was frozen fire. If it took years, she would find the people responsible and ruin them.

"As you say, Ambassador, this was planned. It was not your doing. Our Internet inquiries left us vulnerable. Have Dutch review our methods and find out if we can do more to reduce the amount of information that our inquiries make available about us."

"Yes, Prime."

"Better security when people leave the island has to become a top priority. Flareup and her sparklings now have a NEST detail to provide protection from human threats."

Mearing said, "If this had extended into State, they _could_ have taken the mini-twins. What the hell are they doing that they wanted to study Cybertronian self-repair?"

"I see no way that organics could benefit from such knowledge. So far there has been no evidence that our self-repair nanobots can cross the species barrier to be used to heal humans."

"Whatever their purpose is, they went to a great deal of trouble and effort to get the data."

"What do we know so far?"

"This originated in the States. They have a military background—they're choosing operatives for those skills. They have financial backing. They have technical expertise. They've been watching us for a while now. They're smart enough to cover their tracks. Given the timing of the Fort Hood connections, this started after the Battle of Chicago.

Prime, there are seven more bots who need to be warned of the danger, the four in the US military and the three working construction in Chicago."

"Already done."

"Then with your permission, I need to follow up more of these leads."

Prime went to Wheeljack's workshop. He and Kaela had their heads together over something on his workbench.

"Prime. Have you just come from medical?"

"Yes. Ratchet was just completing his examination. He said that Hot Rod will be fine. What do you have?"

"We pried this out of Hot Rod's helm," Kaela replied. She turned on a camera, and an image of the shattered pieces of an item that she was examining appeared on a monitor. "It's based on the paralyzation technology that the Pretender sisters stole from Nightrender. We know there was at least one other unit out there, the one that hit Shimmer, but we never found the 'Con who had it. They've miniaturized it and built it into a fifty caliber round. It's designed not to do any serious damage when it hits, but anybot hit in the head with this would be paralyzed for fifteen or twenty minutes. Someone standing next to him would be largely unaffected."

"Masque and Mirror's countermeasure for it?"

Kaela indicated where Masque was working at one of the smaller benches. "She's building an upgrade-mode prototype now. This is prioritized, but we'll need time to get it ready for testing."

"What about the communications jamming equipment that we captured?"

"A mix of existing Cybertronian and Terran technology," Que said. "The innovation here is the way they've blended the two. It reveals a thorough understanding of both technologies. I suspect the involvement of one of the scientists who studied Megatron at Sector 7."

"Simmons may be able to help us narrow that down. Take a break and go see about your apprentices."

"Yes, Prime."

Optimus went out the back door from Med-Sci and crossed to Ops. Simmons was riding around on Scramble. He had been on his feet too long during the rescue and his leg had finally protested. He was working on the backgrounds of the operatives that they had killed or captured.

"Most of them are mooks," he reported. "Recruited for their muscle, not their brains, thank God. This one—" he indicated the one who had been "studying" Hot Rod— "Paul Dawson, got booted out of the Army back in 2004 for enjoying his work interrogating prisoners a little too much. He went to college on his dad's money and got a bachelor's in electrical engineering, and went to work for—get this—Dylan Gould. I'm still trying to connect him to the rest of the gang, but nothing so far."

"Que was looking at some of the things we captured. He thinks whoever built some of it had a good working knowledge of Cybertronian technology," Optimus said.

Simmons pulled up four more pictures, then dragged one a little apart from the others. "Then it's one of these three. I doubt it's Carol, she's at 51 now working legit. James Bannister and Forrest Clemens are in the wind."

"What about this man?"

"Mark O'Grady. The most brilliant hacker I ever met. He was the first one to suspect we were dealing with more than just machines. When I wouldn't listen, he walked. He's now Father Mark, working at a mission school in the Congo. He's _not_ our guy."

Simmons went to work. At least one of his old colleagues had some explaining to do.

*-T-F-Rising*

Kylie, Hot Rod and Bluestreak got settled in the mechlings' quarters. Kylie had her own room on the human side but she spent most of her time here. They had put a table next to the window and covered it with a cargo net. Kylie had a chair and a human-sized table on top. She had hung a hammock underneath. During school, their homework was usually scattered all over the place, and someone usually frantically needed something lost in the pile twenty minutes ago.

Que asked Hot Rod, "Are you all right, son?"

"Yeah, sure." Hot Rod wasn't sure himself how much of that was bravado, and he knew everyone else in the room knew that too. But nobody called him on it. More honestly, he said, "Right now, I think what I need is about an orn of recharge."

Blue said, "You take the berthroom. I'll be right here."

Que said, "A good rest is the best medicine for a lot of things."

Hot Rod went.

Que asked, "Are you sure you two are all right?"

Kylie said, "Aside from scaring ten years off my life, they didn't get a chance to do anything to me. At first we thought Hot Rod was pulling some kind of prank, you know, make it look like he'd been murdered then jump out at us like a zombie or something. But then we found tracks and brass and stuff and we knew something really awful was happening."

"You defeated three fully trained warriors," he said. "Like your brother apprentices, you have fought bravely in defense of your own. By our customs you are no longer truly a youngling. Kylie Warrior."

"Thank you, Craftmaster."

"Whenever you're ready to talk about it, I'm here. We all are."

Kylie looked down. "There's nothing to talk about, Que. There was something I had to do, so I did it. I wish there had been another way. There wasn't. I had to get past that guard. The other two were shooting at me. After that we got the hell out of there. That's it."

"Right you are. You had no choice. They did. If you should ever doubt that, don't face the darkness alone when we are here for you."

Kylie nodded, smiling a little.

Que could see that Bluestreak and Kylie were as tired as Hot Rod. He left them alone then and went back to his workshop.

He was the gentlest of bots, and before today he never would have thought he ever would have considered disobeying Prime's orders against harming humans. But he had never had a parental bond before. If Kylie hadn't beaten him to it, he absolutely knew he would have hunted down and killed that glitched piece of slag, if it was the last thing he ever did.

Too angry to work, he went outside and wandered aimlessly down the beach.

Ironhide and Will were sitting out at the end of the short pier, watching some people on jet skis. They called him over. They were drinking, Ironhide supplied him with a cube of high-grade. It was that horrible stuff the miners brewed, black as tar, full of whatever was most likely to make Ratchet glitch, and strong enough to get up and walk off on its own. Right now it was perfect.

Que said, "Never before I have wanted the pleasure of killing anyone with my bare servos—and that it should be a human—what in the _Pit_ is _wrong_ with me?"

Will raised a bottle of Jack Daniels, of which a significant portion was already gone. "Not a goddamn thing. Welcome to fatherhood, Que. Whatever else yer supposed to do, _protecting _them comes first. As long as you're alive. And ya fuckin' _can't_, not without lockin' 'em up someplace. Be somethin' wrong with ya if ya din't wanna throw the sonuvabitch and watch 'im splat," he slurred.

Ironhide said with the profound wisdom of the truly plastered, "That is the truth. Here's to Kylie makin' the planet a better place for everyone." They all drank to that. Hide finished off his cube and set it down on the pier with exaggerated care. "How they doin'?"

"Recharging by now, I should think."

"Best thing."

Que took a long drink. Getting overloaded wasn't going to change a Pit-be-damned thing, but it could postpone everything until tomorrow, and for now that was enough.

*-T-F-Rising*

Kylie went back to her apartment for a quick shower. There was blood on her black sweater. She threw it in the trash and scrubbed herself raw in the hottest shower she could stand. Then she pulled on a T-shirt and some old yoga pants, and stepped into a pair of flip-flops.

Her next step was the mess. She grabbed a bottle of ice tea and an apple, finished it quickly, then went back to the mechlings' apartment. Sometime while she had been gone, Hot Rod had come out in the lounge and gone back into recharge lying on the floor, next to where Bluestreak was sprawled on the couch. Kylie curled up next to Hot Rod's head. Something irrational told her that she had to be close enough to touch him and know he was all right. After a little while, he said something that could have been her name and wrapped his servo protectively around her. Finally her exhaustion and the safe sounds of home let her drift off to a restless sleep.

*-T-F-Rising*

Chromia was awake when Ironhide came stumbling in at 0200. "Where's Starry an' Firecracker?"

"Safe in their berths," she assured him. "Where you ought to be."

"What if it'd been them?"

"It wasn't. Berth. Now."

"Like it when you say that."

"To recharge, you lugnut," she laughed. "You won't be doin' anything else till you sober up. The rest of 'em make it in?"

"Put Que in his quarters. Sara went, uh, someplace with Will."

"OK."

*-T-F-Rising*

Halfway around the world, Emery Bodine stood overlooking rows of what looked on the surface to be Transformers. They were drones, as powerful as the sentient beings they emulated, but free of independent thought, conscience or emotion. Each would be under the remote control of a human operator at all times.

Losing Dawson before he could report on the results of his experiments on the immature NBE was unfortunate. Giving his army of drones the NBEs' self-repair abilities would have been useful. It might still be possible if a test subject could be captured, but that was unlikely now that they were on alert.

His contacts within the Australian Army had given him some very interesting information, though. Optimus Prime's sentimental noblesse oblige made the remaining NBEs no threat, if no use. Honor taken too far was a weakness. But the humans of Diego Garcia were a definite threat. Three of his men had been taken out by a seventeen year old girl.

It wasn't that they were raising ninja assassins, not on purpose anyway, though he would spin it to the ranks that way. The truth was, Will Lennox was training a generation of kids to keep themselves alive in any survival situation, and it was no surprise that they used those skills to look out for their bot friends who were too stupid to look out for themselves against human opposition. He was training up heroes, and live heroes tended to get in the way. Something would eventually have to be done about that. For now, he was too busy covering his tracks until things quieted down. With Sam Seaborn in the White House, they had the Feds snooping around as well as Black Team. Besides that, nobody ever knew exactly what pies Charlotte Mearing got her fingers into, or where her loyalties lay these days. The plan would proceed quietly, along other lines, until they were strong enough to move openly. In the meanwhile, it would be interesting to see who asked questions.

*-T-F-Rising*

Sam Seaborn told Josh Lyman, "Whoever pulled this stunt is distracting the Autobots exactly when we don't need them distracted. If Optimus Prime believes there's a credible threat out there, I believe it. He doesn't jump at shadows. We don't need him having to take time away from that because some damn fool is threatening their kids. I want these loose cannons shut down. Homeland security better start earning the free rein they've been getting."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"What's the latest estimate on Project High Flier?"

"Sixteen months, sir."

"Josh, make sure that project is secure from these homegrown morons. We cannot afford to have those resources diverted to serve some glorified corporate espionage scheme when we could have someone about to drop the hammer from orbit."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"How is Donna?"

Josh groaned. "Last night it was Hawaiian pizza and Nutty Bars."

"I thought that was supposed to be stopping by now?"

"I asked Dr. Bartlet. She said with Zoey, she was craving bacon sandwiches in the delivery room."

Sam grinned. "I knew there was a reason I stayed single. But I have a feeling it'll all be worth it in a couple of months."

The Chief of Staff nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I guess I'd better get through a few of these reports."

"Thank you, Mr. President." Josh closed the door to the Oval Office behind him and got to work.

_A.N.: Thank you, everyone who has favorited and put me on their alert lists. I appreciate it very much. /A.N._


	35. Dawn of the Acolytes

(Chapter 26—Dawn of the Acolytes)

(Disclaimers in chapter 1)

(Mars—2019)

It was late November when the first dome was finished and the construction site on Mars officially became Mars Base. The miners, the Wreckers, as many bots and humans as they had been able to cram in the _Xan II_ and the _Venture_, about a hundred construction workers and thirty scientists threw an epic party when the dome held atmosphere. The Moonbase was a science station. Mars Base was Earth's first permanent settlement on another planet. People would be living here.

Optimus Prime looked around. The dome covered an upper concourse where the miners would come to sell their materials and buy what they needed to take out to their claims with them. By their standards, it would be a small operation for a long time, but next to him Stonecutter seemed satisfied. His people were busy rebuilding their way of life, and a useful miner was a happy miner.

Most of the base was underground, protected from the ever-present solar radiation. There were two levels of shops, laboratories, and classrooms, and two more levels of living quarters. The lowest level was a greenhouse environment that would eventually expand to produce enough oxygen and food for the human colonists.

Most of the construction had now moved to the science dome, which was being financed by a consortium of universities. Also being built here was a shipyard. The lesser gravity made construction a lot simpler.

Elita was hardlined into a console checking out the base's defenses. Not everything was ready, but they had a sensor net and point defenses, as well as armor plates that could cover the transparent panels of the dome. She nodded, everything was coming along on schedule.

She joined them watching the party. Aside from the people who had come up with them, Wheeljack and his apprentices had actually been up here for about three weeks. Those kids had undoubtedly been learning a whole new definition of the concept of hard work. They seemed to have bounced back from the awful scare they'd had in Australia, but no one thought it would be a good idea to give them too much time to sit around and worry about it.

First Aid, who had been assigned by Ratchet to run the clinic here, was talking to Kaela and Fixer. For the first time in a long while, Kaela was laughing at some story Fixer was telling. Her black suit bore both the healers' guild sigil and a human paramedic badge on the arm. Bulkier forearms and belt than the suits of the nearby humans testified to the presence of modifications, Primus knew what the Med-Sci team had been up to. He trusted that Kaela would be more careful than Que about things that might explode.

There was steady traffic through the main airlock. The area right around the base had been fairly thoroughly explored, but that didn't stop anyone from wanting to do some exploration of their own. Ironhide, Lennox and their families were all out there somewhere, mostly because they had wanted to get the kids away from the increasingly rowdy party.

Elita had persuaded Mearing and Simmons to take few days away from their relentless hunt for Hot Rod's kidnappers. That trail had gone cold. Whoever was responsible was hiding in their cave somewhere. But if they ever wanted to accomplish anything, they would have to come out of hiding sometime. When they did a lot of people would be waiting. In between following whatever leads appeared, there was no use putting their lives on hold.

Simmons was walking around easily in the low gravity. His space suit had his leg brace built in, and the new design was a lot more comfortable than the one he had been using. He and Mearing were talking about the listening post that was due to go into operation soon. Its array would provide coverage that would make the whole system much safer.

Wheeljack commed Optimus. ::Prime, the kids want to go out. Do you think that's a good idea?::

::They should be as safe here as anywhere else, Que. It would be worse to confine them.::

Que told them, "All right, but be careful. Kylie, watch your suit's indicator lights carefully. Take extra oxygen tanks."

Kylie might have got aggravated about the constant nagging, but it just felt too good that someone cared. "I will. We just want to look around. Why don't you come with?"

"I would but I have to be here to answer questions."

"Meet us later after all the VIPs have been here," Blue suggested.

"That is a good idea."

Kylie took care to let Que see her running through her EVA checklist, which the NASA adviser had made sure she knew backwards and forwards before she had been allowed to come out here. Then they waited their turn at the airlock. Stormracer was up here, on leave, not on any official capacity, and she had brought a lot of her friends up. She had been giving Corona a few tips on how to deal with the low air density and gravity. Now they were surrounded by a crowd of humans who wanted to go see Mons Olympus.

It was hard to tell who anybody was in a sea of white suits with US flag patches, but a lot of them also had Air Force insignia and unit patches. Those folks were armed and they walked around the bots with the same confidence as NEST did. Some of the suits were in college colors, university scientists who virtually ignored the bots in favor of the natural wonders around them. One team from Ohio State was already working, collecting rock samples from an area far enough outside the construction zone to be undisturbed. Their red and gray suits were actually not bad camouflage here.

Wayfarer and Mirage joined Stormracer and Corona. Corona was carrying all off-duty NEST troops, who didn't care if she did some fancy flying. She and Wayfarer got into a mock dogfight as they flew off, somewhat restricted by the fact that they had passengers aboard. Wayfarer was still learning her new form, but she didn't have to be as careful of Mirage as Corona did of her human passengers. A real fight between two seekers included a lot more than trying to score points by getting on their opponent's six and trying to get a lock-on. They would often transform and fight hand to hand in midair, dropping thousands of feet before reassuming their winged forms and pulling out. Corona and Wayfarer did little of that beyond trying to get close enough for a quick smack. Both of them were sparkbonded. They were not about to take chances. This was just seekers' idea of fun.

Stormracer flew more or less straight and level, since some of her passengers were just civilians and couldn't pull a lot of g's without people getting hurt. But seeing what the two smaller fliers could do, the onlookers could only imagine if her duties involved something other than keeping her passengers safe.

It wasn't more than a couple minutes before the three fliers disappeared over the horizon.

Once the noise they made fell silent, it once again became obvious that this was a non-organic world. The only sounds were those made by the few people left outside, and the ever-present wind. It constantly blew dust and sand around and sang in the guy-wires of the antennas atop the dome. As far as they could see, with the signs of colonization at their backs, there was nothing but stone and sky.

A graded road gave way to a wide red plain about five miles from the dome. They took off racing into the harsh, cold wind. Wide open spaces like this were nonexistent on Diego Garcia, so they rarely got the chance to indulge their need to push themselves to their limits. The last time had been running for their lives in Australia, and they were agreed _that_ didn't count. After the hard work they'd put in the last few weeks it felt good to cut loose.

A crater attracted their attention. Mars had some bad sandstorms on occasion. The wind had piled sand all up around the sides of it. Kylie got out and her brothers transformed.

Kylie knelt and scooped up a handful of the red sand, let it sift between her fingers. "I still can't believe I'm on another planet."

Bluestreak said, "You can see Earth from here at night."

"Really? When it gets dark you'll have to show me."

"Que will reboot if we're out here that long," Bluestreak said.

"Yeah," Hot Rod said. "I think what happened in Australia scared him worse than it did us. At least we got over it. I don't think he ever will."

Kylie said, "I know. I asked Kaela about it. She just said wait'll I have kids, then I'll understand."

A few miles away, Ironhide's family and the Lennoxes were exploring in the range of mountains that bordered the plain. The adults were sitting around in the shelter of a rock overhang while the kids were exploring strange rock formations carved out by millennia of windblown sand. Sara said, "Fifteen years later and a gazillion miles away, and here I am sitting around in another fraggin' desert cleaning sand out of my rifle."

Lennox laughed. "You know what this place hasn't got?"

"Insurgents?"

"Camel spiders."

She snorted. Like everyone else who had served over there, she had her share of "fond" memories of camel spiders. "Epps put one in my rack one time. I waited till he went to sleep and put it in his helmet. He screamed like a girl when he went to put the helmet on the next morning. Dropped the damn thing right on top of his head." She finished working on the rifle.

Chromia asked, "Aren't those things supposed to be poisonous?"

"They really aren't, not like a black widow or something. But there was a story going around that they were. Lots of people believed it so they were scared of them."

"Didn't know the Marines had female snipers," Ironhide commented.

"They didn't back then. I was an elint specialist. But every Marine is a rifleman."

"She could make shots nobody else could make," Lennox said. "A lot of the time, it was the rest of the team's job to get her into position. She usually went out with a Marine unit, but sometimes when my unit was the most familiar with the area where an enemy asset was located, she got seconded to us. The government never acknowledged that was what she was doing, officially it was always something in her specialty. Now, there are female snipers."

After Hot Rod had been kidnapped, Will had issued orders that his people were always to be armed whenever they were off base, especially when they were with any of the bots.

If anyone ever threatened Starry or Firecracker, Will was determined Hide wouldn't have to worry about disobeying orders to protect his kids. Will intended to neutralize the threat before it ever became an issue. Sara was very capable of doing the same thing from a mile away.

They should be perfectly safe on a whole other planet. Will would make sure that was true.

When it got late and all the VIPs had gone to the party, Bluestreak and Hot Rod talked Wheeljack into joining them. The four of them watched the stars come out, and Wheeljack helped Kylie find Earth. When she switched to her last tank of air, they started back.

Wheeljack's alt was a dark blue Mercedes Benz E550. Kylie rode with him, because Hot Rod and Blue were rough-housing and carrying her would have handicapped one of them. "How did it go with the VIPs?"

"Fairly well. They were mostly more interested in the party or getting out here."

"For most of us humans, this is huge. Getting to come out here. Most of us never have the chance."

"That will change. Colonies will develop throughout your star system. Industries that harm the environment tend to move off inhabitable worlds."

"Can't happen too soon." Kylie laughed at the boys as they lost their footing in a scuffle and rolled down a hill. "It's good to see them having some fun."

Wheeljack agreed. "All of you need that. I am concerned that the coming troubles will make such days few and far between again."

Kylie said, "Try not to worry so much, Que. We did a pretty good job looking out for each other, didn't we?"

"That you did."

"Whatever happens, we'll keep doing that."

"I know. But I should be doing more than just watch you walk into situations where you have to."

"You are. You made us a family, and you gave us a home to come back to. Nobody understands that better than somebody who's never really had either of those things before. We'll always do our best to come home. There's nothing more I can promise."

"I know," he said.

The four of them were just rolling up to the dome when there was a sudden kerfuffle over by the seekers. The people who had been lounging around in and on the fliers ran clear. They leapt straight to flight and headed for the black, dropping into formation as they flew.

"Wheeljack, what's happening?"

"I don't know, I think there's something on the sensor net. We're to report to Ironhide."

The humans were breaking into two groups, non-combatants headed in and fighters coming out. Kylie went to Lennox and got issued a new air tank and a rifle. They were taking defensive positions around the dome, she found herself with Sara Lennox and a couple of airmen named Collins and Turner. Sara advised them, "Sit still, keep quiet and make your air last. We might be here a while."

That wasn't easy, when Kylie didn't know what was happening. She was tired and hungry and the cold seeped through her suit after she reduced the heat to minimum to save her suit's charge. She didn't know where the others had gone after she saw them talking to Ironhide.

A couple hours later, all of a sudden the seekers came back. Wayfarer and Corona were both scuffed up, and First Aid came up to Corona to deal with a minor energon leak. A few minutes later, the Primes gathered the rest of the bots in front of the dome. Kylie found herself giving thanks that Wheeljack, Bluestreak and Hot Rod were among those who were assigned to guard the dome, and then felt like an ungrateful heel for that when the others were going out into God only knew what. The rest transformed and rolled out, hidden by the darkness and the cloud of dust they kicked up.

Kylie wanted to be a little kid and ask Sara what was happening. Instead, she checked her suit's indicator lights and waited, alone in the cold black night even if Sara was a foot away from her.

Mirage and Wayfarer skimmed over the dark hills. The scout had designed a new transformation, not quite an alt, that let him fit into her alt's cockpit, once she folded the seat away and made just a bit more space. ::I know he went down over here somewhere. We might be looking for wreckage, not a corpse. Stormracer wasn't playing games.::

::Damn the concentration of iron in the soil. It's playing Pit with my sensors.::

::Wait, I saw something. An IR signature.:: She came about and transformed in midair over a small flat area. Both of them landed lightly on their peds and deployed their guns.

::There he is,:: Mirage said, a brief flash of his work light illuminating the remains of the unfortunate seeker who had the misfortune of meeting Stormracer under hostile circumstances.

They looked down at him. ::Mirage, do you recognize him?::

::Not offhand.:: He sent their location to Prime, then knelt for a closer examination.

A second later an explosion knocked them flying. He hit the ground hard, then everything went black.

First Aid, Kaela and Wheeljack ran to Stormracer and the seeker took off at full blast from a standing start as soon as she had them aboard. Kylie clenched her fist, desperate to know what happened.

Elita's optics brightened as she turned back to Optimus. ::They'll be all right. They ran afoul of some kind of IED on a corpse, but apparently it misfired. Instead of blowing them to pieces it just knocked them around pretty thoroughly.::

::That explains what the third one did after he lost our seekers.:: He reached out with all his senses. One seeker was no match for the two of them, but if he attacked from ambush it could be another story.

Elita said, ::There's the last one, right where Corona said he'd be.::

The two Primes approached the downed drone carefully. It was quite dead, but after the exploding one had nearly killed Mirage and Wayfarer, they were cautious of another booby-trapped corpse. Elita sent a small remote up to it and carefully defused the device.

Once it was safe to approach, Optimus knelt to get a closer look at a shield on the drone's nose. ::That's no Decepticon shield. I'd almost say it was a Prime sigil, but I don't recognize it.::

Stones crunched under Elita's peds, felt rather than heard. She told him, ::Darkmoon and his followers wore that sigil.::

::Primus! That planet-sized sensor shadow that gave Wayfarer nightmares. Could it actually have been Unicron?::

::I thought it was a myth. I thought Darkmoon was a charismatic glitch. Optimus, how can we fight a god?:: She ruthlessly squashed a rising panic that did no one any good.

He stood and answered grimly. ::There's no escape for the humans. We'll have to find a way to fight and win, or watch another world die.::

Elita nodded. ::Yes, Prime. We're through with running.:: The Autobots would make their stand here in this system, and if they fell, it would be with all the honor and glory of a proud warrior race, in defense of the innocent.

_(A.N.: The next chapter will be up in a few days. I've run out of finished chapters again. /A.N.)_


	36. Tears of the Forest Part 1

(Chapter 27—Tears of the Forest Part 1)

(Disclaimer in Chapter 1)

_A.N.: This chapter begins with a flashback to 2011, concurrent with Chapter 1. Thanks to my good friend Tahra for help with the Portuguese. And thanks to wacko12 for suggesting this chapter's new mech, and helping with the plot. /A.N._

(2011-Amazon Rain Forest—flashback)

A little while ago, the raucous calls of howler monkeys had subsided into silence. The small camp on the banks of a stream was quiet. Dr. Erik Franklin was making his usual evening journal entry. His girlfriend Dawn Brightwater folded the solar collectors into their cases, since they would be breaking camp and traveling deeper into the forest tomorrow. Their associate Rafael "Fael" dos Reis was looking through the shots he had taken that day.

Dawn finished what she was doing and excused herself to the bushes.

A few minutes later the silence was shattered by something huge roaring overhead, trailing sparks. Dawn ran back to camp, still zipping her jeans, while Fael and Erik tumbled out of the tent. They both had rifles, you never knew when you would run into trouble out here.

"What the hell was that?"

Fael said, "It sounded like an airplane or something."

"It was a meteor. It went in over there somewhere."

"No way," Erik said. "If it'd been a meteor that big, we'd be at the bottom of a crater right now."

"Whatever it was, somebody could be hurt," Dawn said.

Fael told her, "Anybody on that needs a priest, not a doctor."

Erik and Fael put their boots back on and they all grabbed flashlights. The wildlife scared by the crash had started to quiet down again when Dawn saw a downed branch. A few more gave them a trajectory.

They climbed over a huge downed tree and found a deep ditch plowed between two more.

Erik asked nobody in particular, "What the fuck?"

Fael jumped down into the ditch, since it looked like the easiest going through the tangle of debris. Erik and Dawn followed. They ran another hundred meters, then stopped dead in their tracks.

Lying in front of them was a robot three times as tall as they were. Blue liquid oozed between armor plates.

Fael said in an awed voice, _"Meu Deus!"_

Then the robot turned its head and looked at them with glowing blue eyes.

The three humans scrambled back out of his way. For a full couple of minutes they all just stared at each other with what-the-hell-are-you looks. Eventually Dawn took a hesitant half-step closer and did the me-Tarzan-you-Jane thing. "Dawn, Erik, Rafael," she said, pointing at each of them in turn. Then she pointed at their new acquaintance.

He made a sound like they'd accidentally called a fax machine.

Erik said, "That...makes perfect sense, actually. But there's no way we'll be able to pronounce it. What are we supposed to do now?"

Rafael said, "Get the hell out of here before the government shows up."

Dawn said, "But we can't just leave him."

"You don't even know it's a him and even if it is, what are you going to do? Stick him in your backpack?" Fael replied.

Erik said, "Let's just calm down and think this through. It'll take anybody a long time to get here and they won't necessarily be able to find him. No chance you speak English? _Voce fala portugues? Habla usted espanol?"_

After a moment the robot had what Dawn would swear was a light-bulb-over-the-head moment. "English? Is this your language?"

"Right! Yes!"

"Where am I?"

"You're in western Brazil. In the Amazon basin. Um, can you get the Internet?"

"Your communications network has been malfunctioning for the last forty-eight hours, then about sixteen hours ago all your comms stopped functioning correctly. I need to find Optimus Prime and report for duty. It is obvious that our war has come here." He obviously didn't speak the language yet, and was working with some kind of translation program, but it worked well enough to break the language barrier.

"Who? What war?"

"It is...complicated. If you do not know of Optimus Prime...please tell me that you do not know who Megatron is."

"Um-no?"

"Thank Primus for that, in any case. For a moment, I thought the Decepticons might have won."

"Look, we don't know about any war, any Optimus Prime, or any Megatron. Or Decepticons. What we do know is that the government here is going to be really interested in you. _All_ the governments are going to be interested in you. We need to get out of here before they get here."

"It is doubtful that my approach was tracked. Standard Decepticon tactics are to disrupt comms as much as they can before a battle. Your network is vulnerable to disruption, though its diffuse nature will make it difficult for them to keep it down for any length of time."

"The only war we know of is on another continent called Asia, in some countries called Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that make any sense?"

He searched his memory of the transmissions that he had monitored on his way in. There were huge gaps in intel, and some of the records that he had downloaded flatly contradicted one another. "There are indications that something may have been happening in a place called Chicago before comms went down. Is that in one of those places?"

"Oh, hell no," Erik said. "Chicago is in North America, in a country called the United States. We're in South America. Asia is on the other side of the world."

Dawn asked, "Can you say your name in English? Because, I'm sorry, but I don't think we can say it in your language."

"I don't know exactly, but I think you could translate it Hound." Actually, in one memorable instance the Decepticons had called him "that damn little turbo-fox" and it had stuck, but he decided Hound was close enough.

Worries about whether or not there was a war on got sidetracked when Hound tried to get up and realized he couldn't. One of his leg plates was bent and obstructing his knee joint, near where the blue stuff was leaking. He said something in his language that needed absolutely no translation.

Erik hurried to help, but yelped when he got his hand in the blue stuff. His fingers were quickly turning bright red. "That's hot, people."

"What can we do?" Dawn asked.

"Climb up top and keep watch, let me know if trouble's coming," Hound said. As long as he'd been fighting, he knew how to take care of minor injuries. If it was something major out here far away from any help, he was in trouble.

The main problem was a loose energon line, he found a fastener in his subspace and tightened it up. His self-repair would seal it quickly. He carefully pounded the bent armor plate back to shape and replaced it. That would have to do.

After that, he got up and took a few careful steps. His leg held his weight well enough. He must have just slammed into something on the way down and loosened that connection. Nothing else seemed damaged.

Finding an alt would have been nice, but he didn't think there was anything suitable likely to be nearby. Bipedal form was more effective for getting around in this stuff anyway.

He needed a few hours to sort through the information he had and classify some of the things around him.

Erik said, "Let's see if we can get back to camp."

"What are you doing out here?"

"We're environmentalists. We're making a documentary on the logging industry and big agriculture, and its affect on some of the local people," Erik explained. "I used to be a professor at a university in the States. A lot of the local tribes have lived here for centuries. But the people who make up the majority here live a different way. They want to come in and cut down the rain forest and plant crops or raise cattle. That's the really short version of the conflict. The bottom line is, we're destroying the forest before we understand it, and this may be something that our planet needs to survive."

"Why are you doing that?"

"That's the $64,000 question," Erik said. As they walked back to camp, he gave a better, longer explanation of the troubles. "It all comes down to this: when a minority has something that a majority wants, the rights of the minority tend to get trampled. I guess that's just the sad thing about human nature, it's the way we are."

"You're not doing it."

"No, we're not, personally, but we're just three people. The best we can do is try to get the truth out and hope more people listen."

Hound said, "My people's war started over the same thing. We had the All-Spark and the Decepticons wanted it. We had sources of energon and the Decepticons wanted that too. By the time we left, my planet was in ruins and most of my people were dead. Nobody ever wins a war."

"Amen," Erik said. "Sometimes people get stuck fighting one whether they want to or not, though. That's the situation a lot of these tribes are in. Not that they really have any chance to win, when the money starts rolling in."

"There could be cures for diseases here that are being bulldozed before anyone ever gets a chance to find them," Fael said.

Hound moved a big tree limb out of the way so the humans could get by. Soon they got back to their camp.

There was really nothing more to be done tonight. Hound settled down to try to get some recharge when the humans went in their tent for the night.

To his surprise, the peaceful sounds of the night were soothing. The canopy went up fifty meters or more, several layers, each with its own constellations of small organic beings. A rich collection of scents came up from the forest floor and from the botanical organics growing all around him.

Something nearly the size of one of the organics but of another species paused on a branch, looking down at them but wary to approach any closer. It was yellow with dark spots, and its eyes glowed gold in the darkness. For a moment they just observed each other then the organic went on about its business. He searched his collection of images and found something similar known as a jaguar. Hound fell into recharge listening to the wind in the trees.

The next morning the humans packed up their camp, careful not to leave a scrap of anything lying around that wouldn't return quickly to the earth. Whenever they stopped, he put out his energon cube with the solar collectors that they used to power their small electronic devices. They had some food with them, but for the most part, Rafael knew where to find things to eat. They lived off what the rain forest provided whenever they could. They walked for days without seeing any more people, humans or Cybertronian either one.

A few days later they had a little excitement when they saw an organism that sent the three humans scampering. Something six meters long slithered across the path, and instantly he had Dawn and Erik climbing up to his shoulders as fast as they could move. Fael didn't panic, but he had his rifle out, and he put Hound between him and the creature.

"What's that thing?"

"Anaconda," Fael explained. "They live on wild pigs and so forth, but it's possible they could attack a human. We give them plenty of room."

The huge snake seemed likely to slither up and investigate. Hound kicked some leaves at it to discourage that, nearly dislodging Erik, much to Fael and Dawn's amusement.

Communications started coming back up. Hound produced a hologram of the CNN feed so his new friends could see what was happening in Chicago. They all stared in horror at the devastation, but at least the long terrible war was over.

"We've been called to join Prime," he said.

"Is that what you need to do?"

"I suppose so," he said. "I don't know what we'll be doing now that the war's over. I don't think I know how to do anything except be a soldier."

Erik said, "Well, you can hang out with us as long as you want to, until you figure out what you want to do next."

"Someone's coming."

Erik said, "Get off the road, quick."

They hurried back into the jungle. Soon a local vehicle full of armed men drove by. Hound scanned it.

"Who are those people?"

"Company thugs," Erik spat.

Fael said, "It's better they don't know we're here. They wouldn't like it much if they knew we were going to be filming in the area."

"Give me a little room." Hound transformed into his new alt, a jeep, much to the delight of his friends.

Erik pointed at some company decals. "You want to not have those. They'll think we stole you," he said.

Hound deleted them. They walked around him, carefully looking for any other markings that would attract the wrong kind of attention. Then the three of them piled in, and Hound hid their cameras in his subspace. Now they were just two American tourists and their local guide, nothing for the thugs to care about.

It wasn't that Hound made a conscious decision to stay with the three of them forever. But day after day went by, and he had less and less reason to move on. The three of them made their documentary, and it did some good. They made several trips into the rain forest to follow up. Once Hound had to stay in his alt form for three solid weeks while they took some American movie stars to see what was going on. That led to more publicity and more help for the locals.

Erik, Fael and Dawn had started out to make a documentary, not join a movement. But again, day after day passed, and the fight became their own. Before they knew it, five years were gone. Dawn got pregnant. She and Erik got married, and they had a little girl that they named Joana. Fael had a long string of girlfriends, never serious about any of them. Erik became well-known in environmental circles, due to the success of their documentary and the book he wrote, and by early 2020 he was being asked to lecture at universities all over the world. Though he hated to be separated from his wife and child, he went, because the cause was so important. They ended up with a home and an office in Rio to take care of the arrangements. They also ended up with something they thought they would never have, enough money to get by on.

In March, Fael and Erik were walking out to join Dawn and Joana, who were already sitting in Hound's alt form. They were making plans for a trip to London.

Suddenly Fael saw a flash of something and shoved Erik. There was a crack, and Rafael went down on the sidewalk. People were screaming and there was blood everywhere.

There was a hospital just blocks away, but Fael never got there. He died in the arms of his family.

The police took their statements and supposedly investigated, but they all knew the truth. Nothing would be done. The killer would never be found-unless they found him themselves.

Hound and Erik wanted Dawn to take Joana to her family back in the US, but Dawn refused. These people had money, they could send kidnappers there. They were safest if they stayed together, and the best defense was a good offense. The day after the funeral, they headed upriver.

*-T-F-Rising*

(Diego Garcia)

Charlotte Mearing smiled quietly as she looked over the files on the datapad in front of her. She had been unable to locate any solid evidence on the people responsible for Hot Rod's kidnapping, but what she had located was money disappearing into a black hole in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She might not be able to touch the person who ordered the kidnapping yet, but someone was getting a lot of financial backing from some very unsavory people. She could make life very unpleasant for those people.

Cutting supply lines was a time-honored objective of any war. Pretty soon her real target would figure out that she was going to keep sticking him in the pocketbook until she bled him dry. Then he'd come out and fight.

At the top of her list was a man named Raoul Braxton. The Brazilian-American son of an American industrialist and a Brazilian heiress, he had spent his time between both wealthy families. When the political climate had turned distinctly chilly for his kind, he'd moved his operation to his mother's home country. His legal operations included several high-profile construction projects, including a few that were drawing the high-profile interest of the environmental community. Mearing had discovered a lot of rumors that he was involved in a lot of less than legal dealings involving drugs and human trafficking.

He was about to find out that he had given money to the wrong person.

She went out to Ops and found Optimus and Elita together. The subject was what it had been for a couple of months, whether something in the news was a sign of the presence of the seeker who had escaped a few months ago on Mars. Elita thought a sighting in Japan might be. Optimus rather had the feeling that the seeker had escaped with his report. Mearing figured it was trouble either way.

When the two Primes acknowledged her, she explained what she had found. "They're being very careful with their finances. I don't know where this money is going, but I know where it's coming from. If we can shut down their funding sources, we may make them angry enough to take direct action."

Elita nodded. "A good strategy. You have an initial target?"

"I do." She plugged in her datapad and put Braxton's picture up. "He's the sort of person we'd be doing the world a favor if we can prove him guilty of a crime, but I think he's got mixed up in this through his father's family. They've been associated with suspected criminal elements of the extreme right wing for twenty or thirty years now, but they've never been caught at anything illegal themselves. The other people who have been pouring money into this either move in those circles or are closely associated with people who do."

Elita said, "Most of the people on that list were involved with Prentiss' political campaign, or at least major contributors," she said.

"Yes."

Optimus had hoped there would be no more trouble from that human after his Presidential ambitions had been thwarted. "Prentiss wanted to use us to fight his wars in the Mideast, Elita. I wonder if he could be coming at the same thing from a different angle? Possibly some mad attempt to force our cooperation by holding our young people hostage?"

"A private citizen can't conduct a war, and that's all Prentiss will ever be. He's finished politically," Mearing said.

Elita commented, "That was once said of Megatron, before he assassinated most of the Council and started a civil war."

Mearing said, "I won't say it's impossible that their proposed endgame is similar, but they aren't at that point yet. With a little luck they never will be."

Optimus had been scanning the information on the datapad. He said, "This individual has been associated with a group of men who were imprisoned for collecting young girls from the streets of Rio de Janeiro and selling them as slaves in other countries. No one was ever able to prove that Braxton was involved. I was not aware that slavery was a problem on this planet."

Mearing said, "Slavery has always been a problem in human cultures. It became an _issue_ a couple hundred years ago when most countries began to outlaw it. Now it exists in the shadows in every nation of the world. If we can prove that Braxton was involved with this, or any of the other things he's been accused of doing, his own nation will have to act."

"Whether he was involved with Hot Rod's kidnapping or not, that's worth doing," Optimus said. "Slavery is an abomination. If we can act to stop it, we must."

Elita said, "I suggest that Black Team should work together with human agents who can move among these people to get the information that we need."

Mearing said, "I've done a lot of work in Central and South America. I think my Ops team will be very well able to handle this."

"You, the Pretender Sisters, and Li?"

"Yes."

"You need to travel separately. It shouldn't be a problem to manufacture something for Elita to be investigating in Brazil," Optimus said.

"There's always the Vanishing Meteor," Simmons suggested.

"The _what?"_ Elita asked.

"It happened right after the Battle of Chicago. An observatory in Peru got footage of a meteor crashing into the rain forest. Nobody else confirmed it, and nobody has ever found anything in nine years. Believe me, I've kept an eye out. But it crops up on the internet every so often. What leads me to think there may be _something_ to it is, there was no seismic event connected with it. If this had really been a meteor, there would have been. It's a big rain forest. There _could_ be something down there we'd be interested in finding. The important thing right now is, the impact site was in the same general area as Braxton's holdings. Nobody would be surprised if we sent a team to check it out."

Elita said, "That would be perfect. Is there an airstrip where we can put down?"

Mearing said, "You'll have your pick of airstrips. Most travel in that part of the world is by air and water."

Optimus said, "Elita, if these people are connected with the kidnapping, they may see you separated from the rest of us in a very isolated area. It might tempt them to take action."

"Well, that would be an extra cube of energon, wouldn't it?" She said. "I doubt it would be that simple."

Mearing said, "You'd be surprised what's dropped right into my lap over the years, but I tend to agree with you. I don't think they'll take the risk right away. It's worth hoping, though. Prime, there is one thing. I won't take Masque and Mirror unless they are allowed to use necessary force to defend themselves. They're only marginally more resistant to small arms fire than Li and I are."

He thought about it. "Agreed, but they are only to use lethal force if it's absolutely necessary. In a situation like that, it would be better if you or Li took the shot. For that matter, better if Li did. We don't want to involve the US State Department in a shootout with Brazilian criminals if we can help it."

Mearing smiled angelically. "I'm certain that's precisely how it would happen, Prime." When they got to Brazil, she had the contacts to acquire ordinary weapons for them all. No one who found a thug with a 9-mil slug in him would suspect he had been killed by Cybertronians. Her idea of a perfect operation did not involve gun-play, but sometimes it was unavoidable. And that particular 9-mil could be found in anyone's possession.

(Continued in Part 2)


	37. Tears of the Forest Part 2

(Chapter 27—Tears of the Forest Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

(Just to be safe I'm going to add a warning that somebody drugs someone's drink in this chapter. I'm not exactly sure what warning that would go under, but I figured it could trigger someone that it ever actually happened to.)

A couple of days later, Black Team left openly for Brazil aboard the _Venture,_ and landed at a small airfield near the suspected site of the Vanishing Meteor's disappearance.

The day after that, travel writer Emily Davis and her entourage arrived in Rio aboard a private jet. Masque was now a Emily's agent, a willowy African-American named Dominique, while Mirror was a short brunette bespectacled photographer named Miranda. Lisa Li became simply Miss Li, Emily's hired bodyguard. Attractive female bodyguards were very common in areas where kidnappings were frequent.

Corona had to stay at the airport for the time being, but she was in constant communication with the team. If they needed a quick exit, the small agile seeker could provide it within minutes.

*-T-F-Rising*

It had been a difficult journey upstream for Hound and his friends. They were glad to leave the riverboat that had carried them most of the way, so they could speak openly. Joana didn't understand what had happened to Fael, but she had seen the whole thing and now she was frightened that if one of her family was out of her sight for more than five minutes, they would disappear also.

When she was soundly asleep for the night, he told Erik and Dawn, "We might have company. There's an Autobot team down here to investigate the Vanishing Meteor. If they do find my landing site, they'll know what it is."

Erik said, "How likely are they to be able to do that?"

"I don't know. It depends on what they have to go on."

"What happens if they do? Will you be in trouble for going AWOL?" Dawn asked.

"I doubt it. The battle was over before I ever even landed here. Megatron's dead and so's that fraggin' traitor Sentinel. There was nothing more for me to do. We don't have the same kind of rules that your army does. If a bot ain't there because he thinks it's something worth risking his life over, I wouldn't want to have to trust him to watch my back. I think I've been doing something worth doing."

"Will they make you go with them?"

"Pretty sure they'd want me to, but we're not real big on making people do things they don't want to do. I don't know how well I'd do anymore with a whole clan of bots underfoot all the time. I want to be out where I can feel the sun and listen to the wind blow."

"I hear that," Erik said.

Dawn asked, "Do we have an actual plan to catch Rafael's murderer, or are we just up here to kick somebody's ass?"

Erik said, "I'd be happy to kick somebody's ass, but as it so happens I do have an idea. I'm going to float the rumor that I'm up here scouting locations for a new documentary, and then poke around a few of Braxton's construction sites. I think the chance to shut me up out here in the middle of nowhere will be too tempting for him to pass up. I say we catch whoever he sends after me and stick his head in the river until he decides to turn over proof of who ordered him to shoot me. Then we follow it up the chain until we can pin it on the son of a bitch."

"Dangerous game, Erik," Hound said.

"Fael died because somebody took a shot at me. They'll try again and one of you could get caught in the crossfire next time. I've got nothing to lose by taking it back to them on my terms. These bastards are going down."

Dawn agreed. "They're a threat to our kid and there's nowhere we can run that they can't find us. We've got no choice except to fight back. And they don't know about you."

"I can't harm humans unless it's _absolutely_ the only way to save your lives."

"If you can protect Joana while we do what we have to do, that's plenty and _then _some," Dawn assured him.

Erik added, "Don't forget, you're the getaway driver."

Dawn laughed, "I guess I'm Etta, but which one of you guys is Butch and who's Sundance?"

There was some good natured argument about that before the humans joined their daughter in sleep for the night. Hound kept watch, and mourned Rafael. Humans had so little time anyway. He shouldn't have been robbed of half his life for no better reason than greed.

Dawn believed Mother Earth was a goddess, a real person like Primus. She believed human souls came from her and returned to her, to rest and learn the lessons of their lifetimes before being reborn, just as Cybertronians were. If that was true, they would meet again one day. And there was no more honorable destiny in either culture than to sacrifice your life to save someone else. Wherever Fael had landed, he would have received a hero's welcome when he got there.

*-T-F-Rising*

Elita looked around in wonder at the massive trees of the rain forest, giants that dwarfed her. Six NEST agents were staying with _Venture _while they were gone. Wayfinder and Mirage had taken off a moment ago on a recon flight. Georgie, Bee and Shimmer were wandering around the edge airstrip, none of them had ever seen anything like this before.

::What have you found?::

::Nothing yet, but—see for yourself, this place is _amazing.::_

Optimus didn't think he would ever be able to take for granted the casual way Elita folded him inside her defenses and gave him free rein. Then he saw what she was seeing, and shared her awe. Only once before in all his long life had he had that sense of standing in the presence of something so ancient and powerful that he paled to insignificance in comparison. He had never thought, never _hoped_, to experience anything like that again in the mortal world.

Regretfully, he let Elita go. If they had a few less responsibilities he would gladly have stayed there like that with her for hours.

Elita dropped the connection with a last caress, then transformed, using the enhanced senses provided by her alt form and the aerial view that Wayfarer was sending to get her bearings.

For several miles from the airstrip, there was a very serviceable dirt road. Even here, people recognized them and waved and shouted as they passed, many of them scrambling to take pictures with their cell phones. ::Be on your best behavior, sparklings. We're going to be on You-tube any minute now.::

Georgie suggested, ::If you see anyone who looks important taking pictures, stop and ask them about the Vanishing Meteor.::

::Good idea.::

Some older people seemed to match that description. Elita didn't want to scare them. She stopped a good distance away, stayed kneeling after she transformed, and kept her voice down. "Excuse me, do you have a moment?"

They approached cautiously, but curiosity won out when she didn't make any sudden moves. "Good afternoon and welcome! How can we help?"

The Portuguese language files that she had downloaded were from Portugal, and there were differences between that and Brazilian Portuguese, but they could understand each other well enough.

"We're interested in the Vanishing Meteor. Do you know anything about it?"

An old lady told a child, "Get Joao!"

The boy soon returned with an older man, tall and rangy and with a set of deep scars on his face and shoulders that looked like they had come from the claws of a large animal.

He asked, "You're asking about the Meteor?"

"That's right."

"I was hunting up in there that night. It went right over my head. Probably, oh, 150 meters up. I got back to my boat and got out of there, I figured if it wasn't radioactive, it would start a fire when it hit."

"Can you show us where this was?"

"Sure. Let me get my gear and I'll be right with you." That took little time, he quickly returned with a small pack, a bandolier and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He had no problem with riding on the outside of her alt, which she had modified over the years to make it more comfortable for humans to grab on. Considering that she was the first of her kind he had met, and that had been fifteen minutes ago, Elita already had a great deal of respect for him.

"Couple things you should know about the area we're getting into. There's no roads and you'll crack your head on a branch every five minutes on the trails, so you'll have to wade in the streams most of the way. For another, that's all Braxton land now, and we'll be trespassing. They shoot trespassers if they get the chance. You may not be worried about that, I don't know. They have rifles and rocket launchers."

"Rocket launchers?"

"Stingers. They either get them from or sell them to the drug runners, I heard it both ways. But a DEA chopper went down up in here, nobody ever found the wreckage. The rumor is, Braxton's boys shot it down."

"I have heard unsavory things about this Braxton before. Is it true he is involved with selling young girls to rich men in other countries?"

"I've heard that," Joao said. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. He's setting up his own little kingdom up here with my people as the serfs. I mean to do something about that if I can. How would you feel about helping me with that?"

Elita remembered what Charlotte had said about things dropping into her lap. "If you can show me proof of these things, we would be happy to do so. It is basic to our way of life that everyone has the right to be free."

"Why are you interested in a meteor?"

"I doubt it was a meteor. I think it was one of my people. You see, we prefer to travel by ship when we can, but we can transform into a form capable of space travel. It is difficult, and not without its dangers, but many of us have been left with few options."

"You think one of your kind has been wandering around out here alone for nine years? Never had tracks spotted by a hunter or anything? He'd have to be _way_ out in the woods for that."

"Not if he scanned some local vehicle, like the rest of my team. He could be hiding in plain sight. Brazil doesn't have as large a net of energon detectors as countries north of the equator where the Decepticons were more active."

"Well, sports cars like that still stick out like sore thumbs out here, but I get the idea," Joao laughed.

Wayfarer found them a good place to camp, a clearing formed by a huge fallen tree, large enough for her to take off and land in. From there, they would have to take to the streams.

Joao left them there and went out to shoot his supper. When he returned, he built a small fire to cook and make coffee. There was a certain casual care about the way he placed his rifle before he got into his bedroll for the night that made Elita think he was no stranger to needing it within easy reach in the middle of the night.

Bee and Shimmer took off to explore upstream a ways. Georgie got room to move and started practicing with her naginata. Mirage and Wayfarer settled down to recharge.

"Tell me if I'm right, you got two pairs of newlyweds here."

"That's close enough, I suppose. Are we that similar?" Elita asked.

"Apparently so. Been married a long time myself."

"You seem...very unaffected by us."

"My grandson is really interested in you. He's all over that Botwatch site on the Internet. From what I've seen, I'd rather have him taking you for his heroes than some rock and roller or football star."

"I never thought of myself as a role model for children. I am a warrior. I do not know what else I could teach anyone."

"That everyone's got the right to be free? I don't mind if you teach my grandson that. _Boa noite, senhora." _Joao pulled his hat down over his eyes and soon fell asleep. Elita was awake for a long time thinking about that, after Bee and Shimmer got back and Shimmer took first watch.

*-T-F-Rising*

Rio was famous for pretty girls wearing very little. Mearing had connected with several old contacts that day. Now they knew where to start looking for information. Braxton had a son, Felipe, who spent most of his nights out dancing and drinking with his entourage. He was a notorious womanizer, so Mirage and Mirror hoped one or both of them might be able to make his acquaintance. Li danced with a few men who asked her, but never strayed far from Mearing, who quietly had a few drinks in the company of her own entourage.

Felipe was very good looking, and dangerous, and knew it. That kind of brash confidence was very attractive to certain women, and those were the women that Soundwave would have expected Masque and Mirror to be.

That no one now would have ever asked such a thing of them made them more than willing to volunteer.

"Dominique" was the lucky lady that evening. Mirror's "Miranda" alter ego wasn't Felipe's type.

Dominique told "Emily" that she'd meet her back at the hotel in the morning and went out clubbing with Felipe's crowd. After a while, Emily paid their bill and they left, picking bars and clubs near Dominique's location. Eventually he went back to his hotel.

Emily went to the ladies' room and activated her commlink. "Masque, you don't need to go through with anything if you don't want to. Just send me a ping and I'll call your cell to give you an excuse to leave."

::I know, but there may be evidence in his room. It's OK.::

"I'll be listening, try to let me know what room you're in."

::I will.::

A while later, she reported that they were in room 2002, a penthouse.

Mearing called Corona. "Masque's with Filipe in Penthouse 2002. How fast could you get her out of there if this goes south?"

::That depends on whether you care if I make them a new skylight.::

"I couldn't care less, if it's a matter of life and death."

::Then-thirty seconds?::

"Where are you?"

::On the roof across the street.::

"OK, got you. Stand by."

Emily pretended to sip her Chablis while she talked on the phone. Li was watching the crowd, and Miranda was idly chatting with a bartender a few feet away.

Dominique spotted them from the penthouse balcony. Corona gave her a ping with her location, she looked up and smiled.

Felipe brought her a drink. She smiled and took a sip, she didn't get much use from most human food but alcohol was easily processed into low-grade energon. She immediately detected something, though... ::This little afthead just slipped a roofie in my drink!::

"What do you want to do now?"

::I think I can play along with him. Maybe he thinks he can sell me, and he'd take me wherever the other girls are held.::

"Or he could just want in your pants."

::I haven't given him any indication that he'd need a roofie for that.::

"OK but watch your ass. He might just be into some kind of sick kink nobody would consent to, drunk or sober."

::Y-yes, Team Leader!::

Masque hit the Internet to find out exactly what roofies did to humans, and played the part, acting extremely drunk then pretending to pass out.

Instantly she was put into a laundry cart with a sheet thrown over her head. She reported that. ::Mirror, pinpoint my location, because I can't see a thing! I think I'm on the elevator. Yes, we're moving.::

::I've got you. The elevator is headed for the garage.::

Li went for the car. Corona watched the garage exit.

Masque saw that she was loaded into the back of a black SUV. She managed to land by the back door, where she could quickly kick her way out of the vehicle if things went badly. But then they put duct tape on her wrists and ankles, as well as over her mouth, and threw the sheet back over her.

::This is embarrassing. Duct tape.::

"Can you get out of it?"

::Yes, but I'd have to transform.::

"I want to see the look on the bastard's face if you do."

They followed the SUV at a distance rather than get made, since Mirror could easily locate her sister. They drove out of the city, eventually meeting a plane at a small airstrip.

Li said, "I don't like this."

"I don't either. But it's definitely the evidence we need."

Mirror was obviously concerned for her sister, but she advised, "Let her run with it. If it gets too dangerous aboard the plane, she'll claw right through the side and jump for Corona to catch her."

"We won't be that close, will we?" Li asked.

"Corona can fly a lot faster than she usually does when she's carrying us. You might pull some g's."

"That's acceptable. Li, if that happens, just stay in your seat and keep looking straight ahead."

"Yes, I understand."

They abandoned their rented car and raced aboard Corona. Flying nap of the earth without lights, she stayed with the smuggler's plane.

Once they had a heading, Mearing reported back to Diego Garcia. Sam immediately set up the big board, tracking all three bots. A few moments later, Optimus Prime was there as well.

He alerted Elita to the operation near Rio, which was apparently headed her way. After that, the rest of the night was a tense wait.

When it was clear that the plane was headed for the Braxton compound, Elita told Joao, "We have an incident. One of our citizens has been abducted from Rio de Janeiro and is now being taken to Braxton's compound. Can you direct us there quickly?"

Joao said, "There are two ways. They cut a road from their landing, if you don't care how badly you stir them up you could just tear straight up that road. It's about fifty miles. If you want to get in more quietly, you'll have to stick with the river. There used to be a hunting trail that went just north of where that compound is now."

"Can you find it?"

"I can if it's still there. I haven't been up in there for five years."

"It will be dangerous."

"So is life," Joao shrugged. "I've been waiting a long time for this."

"Wayfinder, Mirage, get up there and get optics on the compound. Don't get spotted."

The two came together and seemingly transformed into one large jet-then disappeared, though they felt the blast of wind when Wayfinder took flight.

Joao said, "Neat trick, that."

"All of us here can do it," she replied.

"With me?"

"Yes, but you'll have to hold on and don't move more than an inch or so away from me. I can't imagine what fire you'd draw if you just suddenly appeared floating in midair."

"You mean they'd see me right through you."

"Yes, part of you anyway. Cloaking fields work by bending light. They don't work far from the surface of whatever they are concealing. You'll only be covered as long as enough of you is in contact with me to be taken as part of my outline."

"How long can you keep it up?"

"Indefinitely as long as we aren't trying to do anything else very complicated at the same time."

"Then I'd go right up the road. There's no telling how long we'd be delayed if that trail is as bad as I think it is by now," Joao said.

Bee said, "It'll work if we watch our spacing. You're the only one who takes up the whole road, Prime, the rest of us should be able to warn you in time if there's a vehicle full of humans coming."

Elita agreed. "Our job may well end up being creating a diversion anyway so that Ops can extract Masque."

Georgie asked, "What kind of a damn fool idea was it to just kidnap a random person in the first place?"

Elita said, "I wondered that myself. I suspect this is not the first time a young woman has simply disappeared under these circumstances. Felipe has a reputation."

Joao said, "I'll say he does. It's known that young girls who disappear from the villages will be found floating in the river a few days later. No one has ever proven that Felipe had anything to do with it, but that's always been the rumor. He hasn't put himself in the way of any of our hunters for a long time-possibly until now."

Dryly she said, "Don't take your shot while you're standing on me, that could cause me a bit of trouble back home."

"Understood. I suspect there will be enough lead flying around to justify any shot that I decide to take, but I won't drag you into it," Joao promised.

"My thanks." She came from a culture that understood there were offenses against honor which demanded a life for a life. She would stay out of Joao's way, but she couldn't actively assist him.

(Continued in Part 3)


	38. Tears of the Forest Part 3

(Chapter 27—Tears of the Forest Part 3)

(continued from Part 2)

(Warning: Attempted non-con)

Erik looked around one of Braxton's construction sites. A bulldozer was hard at work leveling a foundation for a building. Six or eight guys in hardhats were standing around watching, smoking cigarettes and talking football. But there were no sign of any of Braxton's private army. Even when he walked right up to the chain-link fence with his camera going, the workers just pointed at him, but nobody did anything else.

After a little while, he walked back to the rest. Dawn put her rifle down to take the camera. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, there's no sign of a guard anywhere."

Dawn scowled. "This is the third place we've tried this morning. Where could they all be?"

"I don't know, unless something happened somewhere else. Hound, is there anything?"

He scanned through the frequencies, the normal human ones first, then his own. At first it was just the usual clear-channel traffic from Washington, New York and Diego Garcia, nothing of any interest. But then he started picking up quick bursts of coded transmissions, close by.

"Whoa! You know those bots we thought were looking for me?"

"Yeah?"

"They're running some kind of an operation near here! I'm picking up a lot of short range, heavily coded stuff. Probably a _scout_ op."

Dawn asked, "What does that mean?"

"Scouts are kind of like your CIA."

"So if Diego Garcia sent them down here of all places...if they aren't looking for you, why would they be here?"

Hound replied, "That's what I'd like to know. If we've got a nest of 'Cons hiding in our back yard, I want in on cleaning it up."

"Yeah, that's _all_ we need. But if they're all spies and stuff, how are we supposed to find them in the first place?" Dawn asked.

"I can't decode their conversation, but if I pick up enough of it I can start getting a pattern where it's coming from. That came from somewhere west of us."

Erik asked, "On Braxton's land?"

"Either there or close to it."

Dawn asked, "What would Braxton be doing around Decepticons?"

"They've had human collaborators," Hound told her. "A man in Chicago named Dylan Gould fought with them, he got taken out by one of our human allies. I'm not sure what that was all about, but Braxton seems like the type to get mixed up in something like that."

Erik said, "Whatever he's into, it's worth checking out. That was a big round that hit Rafael. It wasn't necessarily human. We never actually saw the sniper, remember."

Hound told them, "If a 'Con did kill Fael, you shoot for the optics. I'll do the rest."

Both of them nodded grimly. Neither of them had ever gone out with the intention of killing another intelligent being, but for Rafael, that's exactly what they were doing.

Joana started crying. Dawn comforted her.

Erik said, "How many Decepticons are we talking about here?"

"I don't know, and that's the weird thing. I should be picking up their comms too, but I'm not. Not a fra- er, not a peep," he said, amending what he had been about to say around Joana because she loved to pick up new words.

Dawn said, "Maybe these ones lived because they were smart enough to stay off the radio."

Erik said, "If someone has them distracted, we're never going to have a better chance to get in there. If we duck in the back with the gear, can you make that hologram thing of yours look like one of their guards?"

"Sure, that would be easy."

"Then we should be able to sneak around the landing and then just drive in, shouldn't we?"

Hound thought about it. "Yeah, we should be able to. Especially if the guards are busy with something else."

Dawn said, "Let's do this. Joana, you have to be very quiet now, and if any of us tells you to do something, you have to do it, OK? No matter what."

Joana had never heard her mommy sound quite that serious before, but things had changed completely after Tio Rafael disappeared. She didn't know what was going on, but Mommy and Daddy and Tio Hound were doing something really important. She nodded quietly.

"OK, we're going to start by hiding from the bad guys." They climbed into the back of Hound's alt, hidden under a blue plastic tarp, with Joana sheltered by their gear as much as possible.

Hound said, "If I tell you to jump, you grab Joana and jump. Against those guards, she's safer with my armor around her. If there's a 'Con, I need room to move and transform. Don't get closer than about ten meters unless I tell you to. And if I tell you to run, you _run _and you don't stop running_. _We'll put notes in the drafts folder of the free mail account to regroup later if we get separated. Just don't use it for anything else, we don't want to draw attention to it."

Erik remembered some of the internet video he'd seen of fighting bots. They were _big_ and they needed room to move. Also, there would be debris flying everywhere. "Got it. But you listen to me, you big lugnut, if you get yourself captured I'm coming in after you. I lost one brother, I'm not losing another one."

"Likewise," Hound agreed.

Dawn put one hand over Erik's and laid the other flat on Hound's truck bed. "Pact. All for one and one for all."

"Pact," all three of them said together.

The Braxton landing was silent, there were some boats tied up at the pier but the building was locked, the jeeps were gone, and the gate was padlocked. They went around the gate and headed up the road.

Hound said, "Some of these tires aren't four wheel drives like me. There are some cars, but this one—those are Cybertronian treads. Something big, too."

"Ours or theirs?"

"No way of knowing for sure, but several of them together like this are probably the scout team," he said.

"Headed straight for Braxton's mansion? This should be interesting," Erik said.

*-T-F-Rising*

Masque had quickly got bored with the flight. Pretending to be an unconscious prisoner was processor-numbingly dull, especially after Felipe decided to sleep the flight away. Eventually, though, they came in for a landing. She was taken off the plane and thrown into the back of a jeep. From there, they bounced along a narrow dirt road for about twenty minutes. They passed right through a cloaked Black Team without anyone even knowing they were there. Corona was skimming the treetops behind them, far enough back not to be spotted.

After they got to the mansion, Corona landed to let her passengers out and the four of them got into the trees.

Mearing reported, "She's in the compound. We've rendezvoused with Black Team. Local control is Black Leader."

::Black Leader, confirmed,:: Elita replied, making sure everyone was clear on the chain of command.

::So noted,:: Sam replied.

On the opposite side of the compound from the scouts, Hound and the Franklins watched from the jungle as Masque was taken out of the Jeep and put into a building.

Hound said, "Slag! That girl is one of us!"

"What? Are you crazy? _How?"_

"We're not all my size. Some are bigger—_way_ bigger—and some are minibots. That's apparently what happens when a minibot scans a human."

"Well, now we know what those bots are doing here," Erik said.

"Erik, she isn't the only one in there. I can hear some human girls crying. If they come bustin' in here like Iacon Ridge all over again without knowing there are other people in there, those girls could get killed."

"Can you tell them?"

"I can try." His optics momentarily dimmed. ::Unknown Autobots, this is Hound requesting a tactical frequency.::

::This is Elita Prime. Stand by.::

She checked with Optimus, then asked Hound, ::Are you familiar with encryption protocol 17B?::

::Affirmative, Prime, changing frequency and encrypting per protocol.:: He did so, then made a recording of his sensor data available.

::Confirmed. What is your status?::

He reported his position and told her about the humans in the building with the femme. ::I'm covering an exit from the compound located behind the building holding the girls.::

::Acknowledged. Hold position and stand by.::

::Yes, Prime.:: "Dawnie, take Joana back into the forest. This is liable to be a free fire zone any minute now."

"Be careful. Both of you." Dawn had her rifle in one hand and Joana on the opposite hip.

Joana said, "Careful, Daddy, Tio."

Erik said, for both of them, "Yes, ma'am." He kissed Joana on the forehead, then he and Dawn shared a short but passionate kiss for luck before she disappeared into the trees with their daughter.

Hound said, "I told Elita Prime what we're doing here. They're looking for evidence on Braxton too."

"What did he do to them?"

"Apparently he's bankrolling some bigger fish in the U.S. _Then_ they found out he's selling slaves. They've got a man with them who wants both of them because some girls from his village ended up in the river."

"These two sons of bitches sound like something out of James Bond. It looks like all their chickens came home to roost at once." Erik eased the safety off his rifle carefully.

Felipe came out of the building with an Indian girl who couldn't have been more than fourteen. Erik said, "Oh, no. Hell, no. If nobody else is doing something, I'm shooting that asshole."

"Wait, Erik, there's a couple of guards in there with guns. That femme in there with them is only close enough to do anything about one of them. If you start shooting they might open fire on the other girls. Can you follow him and do something quiet?"

"Yeah, I'll think of something." Erik saw Felipe take the girl up some stairs and in a door that opened onto the mansion's second floor veranda. He followed as if stalking some rain forest animal, though with decidedly more violent intentions than taking its picture.

He hid in the stairwell until a guard stationed up there turned around. A rifle butt to the back of the head took care of him.

He looked through the room window, which was open. Felipe had his back turned, and was unbuttoning his pants. Erik figured clubbing the guard had worked pretty well. He climbed onto the window sill and hit Felipe with the rifle.

It didn't work. In fact it pretty much just pissed him off. He came up with a knife and stabbed Erik in the arm before Erik could block it with the rifle. Erik fell out of the window and landed on his ass. Instantly Felipe jumped out after him and kicked him in the ribs, knocking all the wind out of him.

The Brazilian's next move would have been to cut Erik's throat, but Erik grabbed his wrist, trying to fight for the knife.

That was when shooting started below. It distracted Felipe, Erik took advantage of the second's reprieve to swing the rifle with all his might. Felipe dropped, right onto Erik. The environmentalist shoved him off and checked on the girl, then looked around to see where the shooting was coming from.

A man and three women were herding the prisoners, all young women and girls, out of the building where they had been held. It wasn't moving as fast as they wanted because the rescued prisoners were staring at the Autobots who were covering their escape. Hound had two new friends, a red one with axes on his arms and a slightly smaller orange and black one with a naginata of all things. Mostly they were providing physical cover against any stray gunfire from Braxton Senior and his guards.

Most of that was being drawn by three more of them, a yellow one, a blue-gray one, and a big black one who was clearly starting to get annoyed.

Erik didn't see Braxton the Elder around anywhere. He ripped up a curtain to bandage his arm, then tied up Felipe and the guard he had knocked out earlier, then hurried the girl he had rescued down to the others. That all took less time than he expected. He took a moment at the top of the stairs to look around.

A big white bot with blue stripes turned herself into a private jet. The oldest woman asked the prisoners, "Are you the only ones being held here?"

When they said they were, she put them all aboard the jet where they would be safe, except for the tall African-American one who apparently was their spy. She was picking scraps of duct tape off her wrists and she didn't look happy about it.

From his vantage point on the upstairs railing, Erik saw Braxton making for the fence. It would have been smarter to point him out to the people on the ground, but Erik flashed on Rafael dying in his arms because this no-good bastard ordered someone to shoot Erik. He jumped off the railing and tackled Braxton to the ground, punching for all he was worth.

Braxton turned over and elbowed Erik's sore arm, getting away briefly, only for Hound to pick him up by the back of his shirt. He growled, "Where do you think you're going?"

Braxton screamed like a little girl, flailing his arms and legs around.

Once the guards had all been rounded up and disarmed—not too difficult now that they had Braxton—things calmed down. Dawn brought Joana in and put a proper dressing on Erik's knife wound. Butterfly strips had to do in place of stitches.

Joao walked over to the Braxtons, casually holding his rifle pointed at the ground. "Not so high and mighty now, are you?"

Braxton Senior replied with a string of obscenities.

Joao said, "If I wanted to shoot you right now, no one would stop me. But I think it's better for you to spend the rest of your life in prison, locked up just like your victims were. You'll never get out, and people who harm children are hated in prison. It's a better punishment to let you live."

Erik, Hound and Dawn looked at each other. They couldn't disagree with that, and it was what Rafael would have wanted too. Believing that the Braxtons had ordered his murder, and proving it, were two different things.

The large black bot came over. Hound knelt. "Elita Prime."

"Hound. Rise, friend. Thank you for your help."

"These are my friends, Erik and Dawn Franklin and their daughter Joana."

"A pleasure. Hound has told me of your loss. I am sorry."

Erik said, "Thank you, ma'am."

"Corona is taking the women to the nearest town with a doctor. You are welcome to ride along and have your injury cared for."

"Thanks, but it isn't that bad. It looks pretty crowded already."

She nodded and gave Corona some signal. The jet took off, flanked by another one, this one having taken the form of a fighter jet.

The noise of their takeoff scared Joana, who was already frightened by the gunfire she had heard earlier. The small family retreated to a quieter corner to reassure her that they were all OK.

The testimony of the prisoners that they had rescued would be enough to put Raoul and Felipe behind bars for the rest of their lives. They were lucky that Brazil didn't have the death penalty, once the law showed up with a warrant and started to discover evidence of all the other crimes they had committed. Their money wouldn't help them now.

Mearing watched with satisfaction as the Braxtons were led away in handcuffs. Their money also wouldn't be helping whatever outfit had kidnapped Hot Rod. That was one down. She was already planning the next strike.

Elita asked Hound, "What are your plans now?"

"We hadn't thought much further ahead than bringing down Braxton, Prime," Hound replied.

"Brazil will not be safe for any of you as long as the assassin is on the loose. Optimus Prime has asked me to make you an employment offer. As you may know, much of Diego Garcia is a national park. We are in need of someone with your knowledge of conservation and ecological issues to help us manage it."

The three adults looked at each other, but they didn't have to think about it very long to realize it was the best thing. The alternative would be living on the run, always looking over their shoulders. Erik said, "You've got yourself a deal."

*-T-F-Rising*

Two weeks later, Erik and Hound looked around the small prefabricated building overlooking a sheltered cove where their boat dock was going in. For now, they were living in the residential building, but they couldn't wait to get out of there. There were just too many people living in each other's pockets. Hound had already taken to spending all his free time up here where it was quiet. This building had living quarters, office space, and a ranger station in it.

Erik's first six park rangers were five repatriated Chagassians and a retired NEST soldier named Denise. He was interviewing for a couple of conservationists with expertise in these particular environments, but it would take a while to fill those positions, between academic qualifications and background checks. In the meanwhile, he was overseeing everything himself and taking a crash course on the local ecosystems, both on land and marine.

Joana had started preschool. It was good for her to have other kids to play with. The change in circumstances helped her deal with the loss of her beloved Tio. Kids were resilient, and much stronger than anyone gave them credit for. It would take the three adults a lot longer to finish mourning something so senseless.

Erik's friend had died to save his life. The only way he could live with that was to spend the rest of that life carrying on the work that had meant so much to them both, and make sure that he never gave Rafael a reason to regret the sacrifice. Leaving the rain forest hadn't been easy, but he was still in contact with other environmentalists there in Brazil who were continuing the fight without fear of a hired assassin. There was work to be done here as well.

They were quickly settling in with the Med-Sci team. Once Erik was familiar with the structure around here, he was glad not to have the responsibilities of leading a team on top of everything else. Just running the park was going to be a full-time job, at least until they got things off the ground. Ratchet had said they might split off into their own team later, but for now the status quo was just fine.

Hound was fitting back into Autobot society, with a bit of square-peg-round-hole syndrome. He trained with the others, and socialized with them some, but being around crowds just wasn't comfortable for him, and he hated being shut up in the commons. He simply wasn't happy anymore with anything between him and earth and sky. The others, naturally social creatures that they were, may not have completely understood that, but they accepted it as just Hound's way.

After they had found out about the Acolytes, that there might actually be a Unicron out there, that another war was all but inevitable, there was nowhere else Hound could be but here. Erik and Dawn, too, would do their bit when the time came.

Dawn came back from the compound after picking Joana up from preschool. He hugged his two favorite girls and looked at the pretty shell that Joana had found on their way home.

Dawn asked, "How's it coming?"

"I think we could move in. The solar panels aren't here yet so we won't have electricity, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. The portable ones will be enough for laptops and cell phones for now."

"It has running water and a flush commode, that's plenty for me," she grinned. "We can do laundry on base, and eat there too for that matter."

"Then I guess this is home, sweet home."

"I guess it is."

The three of them went inside to see their newly completed quarters. Hound lounged on his berth, the only poured concrete up here, where he could recharge out of reach of annoying coconut crabs. From there, he looked out through the palm trees over an expanse of natural beach to the endless blue of sea and sky. Joana climbed up and curled up on his arm for her afternoon nap, lulled by the warm sun and the sound of the surf.


	39. Summit

(Chapter 28—Summit)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2020—Diego Garcia, Kenya)

It was about ten minutes before the start of the morning shift when Mearing and Simmons walked into Ops. Simmons spotted a donut box and homed in on it. When Carly worked midnight shift, she could be counted upon to order a box of six and leave the extras for the next crew coming on. Mearing filled her mug with hot black coffee and took it up to the catwalk. "How was night shift?"

"I think Sunny set a new record for most consecutive fan-ball baskets, but other than that? Quiet as a church."

"Amen," Mearing replied quietly. Any quiet, safe night was a gift. "You realize with their ability to judge distance and trajectory, you have no chance in that ridiculous game against a Cybertronian?"

"Kaela randomized the fan's oscillation pattern," she explained. "Now no one can predict it any better than anyone else."

"Damn it. Ratchet's got at the coffee again." She poured out the offending decaf and looked for anything with caffeine in it. She eventually had to settle for a cola.

Elita walked in.

"Prime, if Ratchet switches my coffee for decaf just one more time, he's going to the top of my list, I _swear."_

"Primus help us," Elita replied in mock horror, then promised, "I'll talk to him. Again."

Ratchet came in for something, saw Mearing with the soda can, and exercised the greater part of valor. Sunny laughed. "I doubt you'll have to, Prime. We've finally found out what scares old Hatchet—Mearing before she's had her morning coffee."

"Just for that little observation, Sunstreaker, you get to go down to the Commons and tell one of the Tribe to bring me a fresh pot of regular coffee. This stuff is vile." Mearing left the soda on her desk.

"Yes, Ambassador," he said in good humor. It hadn't escaped his observation that a certain McLaren could usually be found enjoying her morning energon about now.

Elita thoroughly appreciated a morning of typical office hijinks. "What's our status on the Cheyenne Black Hole?"

"Number Two on the list, Kenneth Danzler, has just been notified of his upcoming IRS audit. They found out his last few returns have been something less than accurate. Number Three, Tony Berelli, bribed a building inspector in New York. He and the inspector are both going to be arrested today."

"That was fast."

"They're so brazen sometimes. It's as though they really do believe the law applies to everyone but them."

"Do we have a Number Four?" Elita asked.

"Yes, Prime. Number Four is a Wall Street trader named Cynthia Bellamy. Aside from contributing money to this operation, though, she doesn't seem to be involved in anything illegal. I suspect we have a true believer here."

"True believers tend to flock together," Simmons replied. "I'll see if Joe Gilmar can follow her around for a while and see if she's hanging around anyone interesting."

"And finally, Number Five is a dummy corporation in Geneva. I'm still working on tracing it back to the real owners. I think the main event is going to be our bad guys' reaction to the arrests today."

Elita nodded. "That depends on how quickly they trace it back to us."

"If I have to drop more bread crumbs, I'll be very disappointed in the state of villainous organizations these days," Mearing replied.

"They should react to protect their remaining assets," Elita replied. "Undoubtedly they will figure out that Cheyenne was the common thread."

"True. What else is happening?" Mearing asked.

"Optimus and his team are down at the _Xan II_ now. They'll be lifting off any time." Training Hot Rod without drawing attention to him had been a serious problem. He had to be in a position where he could frequently be seen with the Primes, without being outed as the heir apparent. Besides the two of them and Blue Streak and Kylie, only Ratchet and Wheeljack knew Hot Rod was a potential prime. Ironhide would figure it out sooner or later, having trained Optimus, but he'd keep his observations to himself.

They had solved the problem by putting all three teenagers to work part of the day in Admin. Younglings were supposed to be exposed to a wide range of experiences in order to be able to make an informed choice about their adult function, so no one thought anything of it. For Blue Streak and Kylie, it was that. For Hot Rod, it was a second apprenticeship.

They were going to Nairobi for a diplomatic summit. The kids had all been nervous, but Elita had assured them all they had to do was be on their best behavior and be seen and not heard. Everyone figured only Bluestreak was likely to have a problem with that. Sam was also going along, since there were venues that would be a problem for the Autobots due to sheer size.

Elita asked, ::Is everything all right, love?::

::Yes, we're just leaving,:: Optimus replied.

::Good trip.::

::How are things there?::

::We're waiting to see what happens after some arrests today,:: she said.

::Keep me updated.::

::Yes, Prime.::

Elita watched the _Xan II _take off, then sat down to go over the morning briefings with Mearing. Carly left to check on her kids, and soon Annie brought a pot of coffee up.

*-T-F-Rising*

It was a short flight to Nairobi. Flareup met them at the airport, Sides was happy to see her. She said, "They've set aside a stadium for our use while we're here. It isn't far from the convention center. There's an official reception there."

Optimus saw a lot of uniformed people on the streets, both military and police. The briefing Mearing had given him from the US State Department warned of a high crime rate as well as trouble from across the Somali border. A suicide bomber, or just somebody with a rocket launcher, was as much of a threat to the bots as to the humans in the group. He put them in their usual threat formation—Little Twins on point, Big Twins on the flanks, with Flareup and the younglings in the middle. Kylie was riding with Hot Rod, and Bluestreak had Sam. Prime brought up the rear where he had the best view of everything.

Flareup directed them to the stadium. It was the only place near the convention center that was large enough to accommodate them. Several large pavilions had been set up for shade, and in this hot dry climate that was all the shelter they needed. There was a crowd and a large welcome, complete with traditional music and dance, and of course speeches. It was four hours after they got there before they were able to relax a little while.

The kids volunteered for guard duty because they didn't have to go to the convention center that night. Sam and Kylie could have had hotel rooms but they didn't want to be separated from the rest of the group, so a large RV had been brought in. Kylie had seen hotel rooms that weren't as nice. There was food in the kitchen, but Sam only snacked because he would be eating at the banquet tonight. Kylie joined the mechlings on watch, while Sam walked over to the largest pavilion.

The continuing problem of Somalia was the topic of discussion. Like every nation in the region, Diego Garcia was affected by the general lawlessness that resulted from the continual fighting among the rival warlords and the piracy and kidnapping that had become a large part of the impoverished nation's economy. Many of the repatriated Chagossians had turned to sustainable fishing for a living. They had to take their fleet outside the boundaries of the national park, which put them in the way of the pirates. So far there had been two incidents and both times the fishermen had routed the pirates. It was only a matter of time, though, before their luck ran out.

Another reason for the summit was climate change. The poorest were always hit the hardest by any disaster, and subsistence farmers were always on the edge of catastrophe. They hoped that Cybertronian technology would be their salvation, and there were some things that they could do to help. But growing enough organic food for billions of people was about as far outside the realm of Cybertronian experience as anything possibly could be. In that area, human science was far ahead of them.

If anything on this planet gave Optimus Prime nightmares, it was the responsibility of balancing the need to give their technology where it would save lives, yet not spreading that which could easily be misused and cost more lives if it fell into the wrong hands. Often there were no right answers, it was a matter of doing the least harm, and understanding what the least harm actually was.

It was those issues that he wanted Hot Rod to start thinking about, though he did not want the youngling to take on too much of a sense of responsibility for them before his time. He also did not want the mechling unprepared if it was Primus' will for him to take up the Matrix sooner than they hoped.

That evening, poverty was far away from the banquet that they attended. The convention center had been chosen for its high ceilings, but it glittered tonight with the pride of the nations surrounding the Indian Ocean. The Big Five had sent high ranking diplomats as well. After the welcoming speech and the banquet, there was the usual diplomatic affair. Flareup and Sam were able to mix with the others, while Prime found it more practical to stay out of the way with his retinue and let the discussion come to him. It saved ruffling the feathers of VIPs who weren't used to sharing walking space with them. He usually ended up part of a circle of older statesmen. Today it was the Indian Prime Minister, Lord Marbury, and the American Secretary of State. All of them had a lot of questions about Dark Moon and Unicron and what they might be up against. Marbury was the only one of them who wasn't a general, therefore he brought a much needed civilian voice to the discussion.

The next day, the summit got down to business, and the younglings found themselves with plenty of work to do. Optimus found jobs for Hot Rod that kept him close by. The mechling was unusually willing to be quiet and pay attention, when every other person in the room was a head of state. They varied widely, from the kings of Swaziland and Saudi Arabia, to the Prime Minister of India in her beautifully colored sari, to the President of Pakistan in her modest pantsuit and hajib. The two of them and their entourages were seated at some distance from one another with a number of delegations between them. Everything done publicly was a well-choreographed dance. Between official sessions, and behind the scenes among the staff, it was all politics, often of the cutthroat variety.

::Can we trust anyone in this room?:: Hot Shot asked quietly, a little scared by the enormity of the responsibility in play. This was the real thing. Millions of lives depended on the decisions made here.

::Keeping in mind that each of these people's first duty is to his or her own country, with caution, yes,:: Optimus replied. ::Sometimes trust is a calculated risk.::

::Yes, Prime,:: Hot Shot replied thoughtfully.

That afternoon during the break, Flareup and her twins were having some energon. The twins were in bipedal form. They had more than doubled their size, but considering they had started out as sparked smart phones, they were still less than 25 cm tall. They were the smallest minibots Ratchet had ever seen, and he had never followed such small bots through their sparkling and youngling stages, but he assured her they were perfectly healthy. Even in the human world, though, being the size of a child's doll was always going to be a definite challenge.

They were almost younglings, almost too old for her to watch over them every minute. They found the safety of their compartment confining rather than comforting now, but she put them back there for a little while to carry them through the milling crowd.

That afternoon degenerated into a screaming match over Somalia, along religious lines. Finally Optimus spoke up. "I could not care in the slightest what religion these marauders profess. They are not acting in a way befitting an adherent of any faith that I know of. If any of you have any way of getting word to them, then tell them this. If they believe that my vow not to harm humans gives them free rein to prey upon the humans of Diego Garcia, they are sadly mistaken. It is not necessary for me to break that vow in order to round up as many of these lawless rogues as I can and turn them over to the World Court to deal with as they see fit. This will not be tolerated, nor am I going to give these criminals warning after warning when once is sufficient. The raids on my fishing fleet are going to stop, or we will stop them."

The room went dead silent for a moment when he finished. No one doubted their ability to follow the pirates home and do exactly what was promised. Optimus figured that was exactly what he would have to do at some point, but the Somali pirate lords were businessmen. If they saw no chance of making a profit, he hoped they would leave well enough alone.

There was also nothing in his words that anyone could continue to argue about, so it effectively ended the shouting. Hot Rod thought they were acting like the Tribe squabbling over something until one of their teachers told them to sit down and get quiet. Maybe all they needed was for somebody they all respected to act like a grownup.

There was another day of talks, and then a farewell ball, which the younglings were expected to attend on their best formal behavior. Kylie was wearing her first formal gown, and had her hair up.

She had very little jewelry. Her apprentice's badge was a pendant on a gold chain, and she had a pair of small diamond studs that Will and Sara had given her for her birthday. She wouldn't compete with the glitterati, but then she didn't think she really wanted to. That wasn't who she was, though the political maneuvering had been fascinating.

Sam was playing honorary big brother for the night, escorting her to the ball and scaring all the young princes and up-and-coming diplomats who asked her to dance. After everything he'd been through, he could handle the likes of them—he knew it, and they knew it, without anyone needing to say a word. Kylie had a wonderful time.

Early the next morning after the summit ended, a couple of young soldiers came up to the stadium when they were getting ready to leave. They were fans and were happy to get their pictures taken with the bots. But they also told a story that had been going around the barracks for years about Cybertronians having been seen at a distance in the Maasai Mara before the Battle of Chicago.

Optimus asked, "How far is that from here?"

"The area of the sightings? About four hours, sir. We know the area well, if we can get leave from our CO to take you up there."

Prime glanced at Flareup, who made some calls. A few minutes later, one of the men's cell phone rang, with his sergeant and orders to take them to see whatever they wanted to see.

Flareup's twins wanted to ride with one of the others so they could see out, which they couldn't behind her armor. Kylie and Bluestreak offered to watch them, so she let them. Gadget sat on Kylie's shoulder and Gizmo magna-locked to the dashboard.

Bluestreak said, "Gadget, hang onto the seatbelt, and if it gets rough, lock on my door frame. I don't want Flareup chasing me down because you rung your bell if I hit a pothole."

She giggled. "I'm careful."

"Sure. I'm not kidding, if you get me in trouble with your mom I'll paint you fluorescent pink, and you won't get it off."

Gadget made a rude noise, but held onto the seatbelt. She didn't want to be some unholy shade of pink. Gizmo thought it was funny until Bluestreak reminded him there was plenty of pink paint to go around.

The soldiers, Akili and Hamisi, took them on a route that showed their guests the country they loved, village life as well as the great Maasai Mara. They had the good fortune to see a lot of wildlife, including a pride of lions.

The area where the Cybertronians had been spotted was one of the most remote areas of the park, but they came across an old dirt road that wasn't on the map and decided to follow it.

They found an abandoned camp. Optimus took both sets of twins to check it out while the rest of them hung back. It was all overgrown with savannah grasses.

Sideswipe saw something odd by some rusty fifty-five gallon drums, and pushed some grass away to reveal a clawed Cybertronian wrist and hand. Other than that, there was no indication who had been here or why. The soldiers estimated the place had been abandoned for several years. It was safe enough, but there wasn't a lot to see now. Everyone came up to check it out. There was a lot of speculation about who the hand had once belonged to and how he had come to lose it.

Sam told the old urban legend of the man with the hook who escaped from the asylum. It was an old chestnut to him but new to everyone else, and he was damn good at telling spooky stories. Even under the bright midday sun, a lot of people jumped when he got to the part about the hook caught in the door handle.

Sides took a half-serious swat at him, and ended up with a boot in a wrist sensor cluster for his trouble. Sam had been training with them too long to worry about a little rough-housing. Flare told them both to knock it off, because she didn't want Gizmo and Gadget to start.

Optimus offered to have the site cleaned up, which the Kenyans were happy about.

Sam said, "Wait a minute. Why did it get so quiet all of a sudden?"

Sunstreaker said, "If this is the start of another one of those stories-"

Hamisi slipped the safety off his AK-47, and his partner followed suit. "He's right. Something has spooked the animals." He looked around for whatever just wasn't right.

The front-liners formed a defensive arc around the rest, leaving enough spacing for the others to shoot between them. Nothing jumped out at them, but by then all of them were sure they were being watched. Nobody argued when Optimus put the two soldiers with Sam in Hot Rod, and the mini-twins back with Kylie in Bluestreak. This time Bluestreak told both of them to lock under the dash somewhere, they were safest there.

Kylie asked, "How did anybody find us out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"They heard us talking over the radio, I'm sure," he replied.

"You think it's that seeker who got away on Mars?"

"Who else? They've got to be cloaked, or Red Team would be all over them by now," Bluestreak said.

Kylie checked her rifle. "Hard to shoot at something you can't see."

"Cloaks don't work in a fight. For one thing, you can see a wavery outline like heat rising if you're close enough. For another, it fritzes in and out if you're moving faster than your processor can compensate-and believe me in a fight you got a lot more important things to worry about."

"So if they sneak up and shoot us in the back they'll have to come visible first. Like that would help us, 'cause we'd already be _shot!"_

"That's why scouts scare the slag out of people."

Kylie said, "Yeah."

Flareup got the first shot off, straight up at something that she obviously hit, because her shots ricocheted. Instantly all hell broke loose as everyone who had a ranged weapon opened up on whatever it was. The cloak failed and Prime's ion cannon opened a big smoking hole in the belly of one of the same type of ship that had attacked the mining colony. That one went in and exploded, but there was another one. It landed and half a dozen bots came charging out.

Hot Rod discharged his passengers and they ran to take cover behind Bluestreak. Kylie jumped out and took her place on the firing line. The Kenyan soldiers thought that was funny until she shot out one of the bots' optic right before he was about to mix it up with Sunstreaker. That left him easy prey for the front-liner.

Not about to be shown up by a girl, the pair of them started looking for their own shots. They were wary of shooting into a melee, of course, but the size of the combatants meant that they were often far enough apart to leave a clear shot.

Blue popped up his guns from alt form, since his main job was to provide cover.

Sam found himself commanding the impromptu fire team, simply because he was the most experienced. Optimus would designate targets for them over the commlink headset that Sam had, and he would pass the orders on.

Hot Rod and Flareup weaved around the front-liners, harassing and distracting the enemy while they waited for a good shot.

It was the front-liners who won fights, though. They had just put down the last one when there was a lot of yelling from the hillside where Blue had taken a position.

More bots were coming down on them over the ridge.

Flareup and Hot Rod were closest. Her sparklings, and his brother and sister were threatened. Screaming battle cries, they charged into the fray with little concern for their own safety. Flareup cut one attacker's legs out from under him and shot him in the face. She moved by his corpse to take on another one.

Hot Rod tackled the closest one to Bluestreak and stabbed him through the throat. But somebot scruffed him and threw him into the side of the hill. He was looking down a cannon barrel—then he saw a streak of red and blue and a firey energon sword, and the mech with the cannon hit the ground in two pieces.

Back on Diego Garcia, the _Venture_ packed full of all the bots and NEST troops who could scramble to the flight line in time, and blasted off from the runway fast enough for the sonic boom to break windows all over the island.

Optimus realized instantly that he was in trouble. There were two more ships on the other side of the hill, one larger than the other three, and a lot more bots down here. He was ordering a retreat when a gun on the largest ship fired some kind of a net.

He immediately recognized energon dampers. He was anything but helpless under a damper, but between that and being fouled in the net there was nothing he could do to stop himself being dragged in.

Flareup jumped on, heedless of getting caught in the damper herself, intent only on cutting the cables dragging him to the ship.

Red Team charged. Sides cut down two or three mechs in passing to get to his Prime and his lover.

The ship gained altitude fast. Flareup cut through one of the cables, but by that time they were high enough up that it would have been suicide to try cutting the others. She could only hang on for dear life and pray as they headed for black sky dragging behind the ship.

Once they were clear of the atmosphere, a hatch irised open and they were reeled inside. The reinforced walls of what turned out to be their cell, and the much stronger energon dampers, made it very clear they weren't going anywhere anytime soon.

The fight back planetside ended quickly, the enemy mechs who had been left behind were no match for Red Team's distraught fury.

_Venture_ tried to close with the escaping ship, but they couldn't shoot with Prime and Flareup aboard. Before they could reach grappling range, the ship jumped.

Elita shouted a curse. Wayfinder did everything she could to track the jump, but something scrambled the trace.

Optimus' voice came over their bond. ::Elita! Calm down! There's nowhere they can take us that you won't be able to find me. Get back groundside and regroup, and come up with some kind of a plan.::

She slammed up her defenses, forcing control out of raw panic. ::Yes, Prime. Hold on. _I will find you.::_

::I know you will. I love you.::

The distance made it impossible to reply in words, but she didn't have to. If they had learned anything from their long vorns of separation, it was that _nothing_ could separate them. Beyond space and time, beyond anything that life and death itself could ever throw at them, they were one spark whose two halves would always call each other home.

They gathered briefly on Diego Garcia. The scouts and the two combat teams went, along with Ratchet and Que. The humans didn't. There wasn't room for the supplies they would need or time to get things together. Elita left Hound, Jolt and the Little Twins as well as Hot Rod and Bluestreak to help the humans guard against a possible attack on the island. The civilians were also there, she hoped they would take up arms to defend themselves if the island came under attack, but that was what warriors were for.

Hot Rod argued with Elita that he should go. Guilt was clearly written in the sharp set of his face plates, in every line of his young body.

Elita said, "Hot Rod, _they have my sparkmate._ Don't you understand? If I fail, if Optimus dies, I will die with him. For me, there's nothing to lose no matter what I risk. But you—if we both fall, you will be our last hope. You have to survive."

The mechling lowered his optics. For the first time he felt the full weight of what that sigil etched into his back really meant. "Yes, Prime. I understand."

"This was not your fault."

"He was captured saving my life, how is that not my fault?"

"Optimus was being Optimus. Evening up a fight when a skirmisher is in trouble with a bigger mech is just what _any_ front-liner would do. It wasn't his fault either. Nobot could have known what they would do."

"Yes, Prime."

She put her arms around him. "Getting people away from the enemy is what I've spent my lifetime learning to do, Hot Rod. I'm getting my bonded back."

He hugged her in return, then went over where Bluestreak was waiting with the sparklings. He watched _Venture_ take off.

_A.N. Sorry for the evil cliffie. The next chapter will be coming soon. /A.N._


	40. Stand My Ground

(Chapter 29—Stand My Ground)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

_(A.N.: I have just realized that I uploaded the wrong version of this chapter-the one without the warnings. I am so sorry. For new readers, be aware that this chapter contains torture.)_

(2020—Deep Space)

Optimus got the last of the net untangled and threw it in the corner. ::Flareup, are you hurt?::

She ran a quick diagnostic. ::No, Prime.::

::I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this.::

::I wouldn't say that you did, Prime. No one made me hang onto the net.::

::Yet you were trying to free me.::

::As any of us would have done for any other. Where do you think they are taking us?::

::To Unicron, I am sure.::

Flareup managed a grim smile. ::My old mech always said I'd end up in the Pit one day if I didn't straighten up, but I don't think this is what he meant.::

Optimus laughed. ::I'm sure it wasn't.::

::Is there any reason to believe we might get out of this?::

::Yes. I believe that Elita and Arcee will be able to find us.:: He studied the cold gray walls of the featureless cell. There were no weaknesses that he could see. It must transform a door when it needed one.

Flareup sat against the wall with her servos around her knee and tried not to think about where they were going. If Optimus Prime held out hope that they would be rescued, so would she. She turned to her sparkbond with her sister, but the distance was too great. She didn't know how she would begin to find Arcee.

She wasn't a scout with all the mods that Elita Prime had. She decided it was better to hold onto hope regardless.

The ship shuddered.

Optimus said, ::Good. That was a jump point. From what Elita told me, there aren't very many of them left, so it's relatively easy to guess where someone went.::

*-T-F-Rising*

_Venture _was grimly silent as she closed on the nearest jump point. Wayfarer used the ship's sensors to extend and enhance her own perception. Like any seeker, when she flew a Cybertronian vessel, it would be more accurate to say that it became an extension of her rather than that she was its pilot. "It's been activated recently."

"So did they leave a rear guard hanging around here cloaked waiting for us to close to jump range?" Elita asked nobot in particular.

Sunstreaker said, "Not unless they had more ships waiting in orbit. The one that took Optimus Prime was the only one that made it offworld."

Wayfarer said, "They have to know we'd be after them."

"Of course they do," Elita said, "They plan on drawing us in. But there's something the humans say that I think they should keep in mind. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."

"They'll _get it_ all right," Ironhide growled. He was working on a couple of shells. A red glow from inside one of the casings reflected off his ebony armor, making him look positively demonic. He shut everything down and subspaced it.

Elita nodded. "Close to activation range and secure for jump."

*-T-F-Rising*

Prime woke from a fitful recharge as the ship they were on docked. The end irised open and then the cell shortened, pushing them out into a featureless corridor.

Prime activated his cestus claws and punched the wall. It left a large dent, but didn't break through. The dent quickly disappeared.

A lash of something like black flame wrapped around Flareup. The femme let out one short, sharp curse of surprise and pain, then went silent, her optics bright with fury as she realized she was being used to punish Prime. No. Fraggin'. Way! She yelled with all the defiant pride she could muster, "Is _that_ the best you can do? That's pathetic! Bring it, you fragger!"

The coil of energy flung her at Prime. He caught her and gave with the impact to save her just slamming into him. By the time they got their balance, the ship had undocked. The passage closed up behind them, pushing them forward.

Flareup made a disgusted noise. "Phew, what _is_ that?"

"Dark energon," he explained.

"No wonder they're so foul-tempered, if they have to live in that smell all the time."

Prime answered with a short laugh. If Darkmoon, or Unicron himself, thought he was going to scare them into submission he had grabbed the wrong bots. He'd managed to slag them off. There wasn't much they could do about it at the moment, but they were just waiting for an opportunity.

They were dropped into a cell, Prime landed awkwardly to avoid dropping on Flareup. There were times they got an abrupt reminder of just how much smaller she was.

This cell was another featureless box, but the walls were transparent. There was no one in the adjoining cells. Out the front Prime could see a scene out of nightmare.

The walls of a large chamber were crusted black with the deposits of eons of dark energon fumes. At the far side of the chamber, the floor dropped away, and occasionally flame licked above the rim. All around the rim a series of pillars with rings set into them at intervals rose from floor to ceiling. There was a steady low roar from the fire burning below. The stench of dark energon was overpowering in here.

Next to his spark, the Matrix's energy fields pulsed in reaction to the darkness around him, keeping its shadows at bay.

Flareup asked, "I wonder if that hole in the floor is supposed to be _the_ Pit?"

"It doesn't quite live up to its legend, does it?" He didn't see any reason to tell her now what the place really was. He had seen one like it before, in flashes of memory that Elita had shared. That wasn't the actual Pit, the humans' eternal hell—just a representation of it where sacrifices were thrown to be melted down.

When nothing else happened for a while, they sat down to wait. Prime's energon reserves were getting low. There was nothing on offer, and even if there was, he sure wasn't drinking anything they gave him here. He initiated conservation protocols. Like soldiers everywhere with nothing else to do, they rested while they could.

*-T-F-Rising*

The instant they jumped, Wayfarer took off from the jump point as fast as she could go, narrowly evading incoming fire from a seeker trine. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had gone through the jump locked to the turrets, a dangerous old trick that put them in place to get the guns hot as fast as the ship could secure from jump. Shimmer took the tail gun. Elita stood by in the airlock with a large container. ::Ready, sister.::

Wayfarer sent a burst of acknowledgement. For this to work, they had to take a near miss—a very near miss. Wayfarer saw one of the seekers coming in and directed first Shimmer, then Sunny to miss him. The seeker made his pass. Wayfarer activated the cloak. Elita kicked the shipping container out of the airlock and magna-locked to the deck plates for all she was worth. She didn't know exactly what Ironhide had packed in there, but when she detonated it, the container went up like a miniature sun, scattering small bits of metal in all directions.

_Venture_ continued on her way, leaving the seekers to celebrate their victory.

*-T-F-Rising*

::Optimus.::

::Elita.::

::You're probably going to hear a trine of seekers bragging that they took us out. It was just a trick to get past them. We cloaked and blew up a crate that Ironhide stuffed full of explosives and chaff.::

::Who's with you?::

::Practically your whole war band.:: It was shorter to tell him who she had left back with Hot Rod. ::What am I coming into?::

::I saw little enough of any strategic value, but I'm sure this is Unicron. The Matrix is shielding us from so much darkness that I have no idea where else it could be coming from.::

::Have they harmed either of you?::

::Not yet. They clearly aren't fools enough to open this cell while I still have the energon to put up a fight. If they think they've accounted for you, they'll wait me out. Here comes Darkmoon now. I'll damp the link, I don't want to risk him noticing.::

Elita dropped the link to make it easier for him to do that. Lord Darkmoon came up to the cell with several of his followers.

"Some of your people were foolish enough to follow us through the jump points. Their attempt failed."

Optimus voice went cold. "You will pay a high price for that."

"You'll do nothing but die, Prime."

"Tell that to whatever fool walks through that door first."

"You'll lose that defiance in a few days, but I doubt this little one has enough energon to survive that long."

Flareup said with an easy confidence she didn't feel, "I've done without before."

Nobot was glitched enough to try to get them out of the cell yet. When Darkmoon and his followers left, Flareup dropped to the floor, trying desperately across an impossible expanse of space to reach her sister. Was the link silent because her sister was too far away, or because she had left them again? Of all the stupid things to happen, after everything they had come through till now, to lose them all to a jump point ambush...

::Flare. They are _fine. _It was a trick, so these glitches won't be expecting a rescue. Elita just told me before Darkmoon came.::

She hadn't had time to process the losses as anything other than a shot straight to the spark. The relief was another one. If they didn't make it through the next few days, none of it would matter anyhow. She shoved it all aside to deal with it later, if there was a later. ::Prime, how long do you think they'll be afraid to come in here?::

::Six or eight joors, at least,:: he guessed. Longer if they realized just how efficient the Autobots had become at making energon last when they were on short rations, but he doubted they would take that into account. ::How are your reserves?::

::About the same,:: she replied. ::But with these dampers up, I won't be good for much.:: She depended on her guns, since she didn't have the sheer mass to attack hand to hand. Without them—she might be fast enough with a dagger to make the first one sorry he got within reach, but that would be it.

::There'll be at least one offline Pitspawn blocking the door,:: Optimus pointed out. ::They'll have to come in one at a time.::

::This is going to be expensive for them. They may back off to wait another few joors,:: Flareup hoped.

::If they do that just may buy us enough time.::

They both knew how much of an if that was. Neither of them dared go into recharge. As long as they were awake, they could prevent themselves from using energon to generate electricity, something they were both starting to need. Better to stay just awake enough to shut down everything non-essential and wait it out.

It was in those long weary hours that the darkness closed in. Whispers in the haunted silence brought back every shadowed path that they had ever walked through the long, long vorns of war. Once-beautiful cities sank into an ocean of shed energon, and all finally spiraled into the void. Friends and loved ones were forever gone. The few who remained enjoyed only a reprieve before the unending night came for them as well. All beauty would fade in time, all song echo to silence. Even the stars would one day fail, one by one. Only entropy could ever know a final victory. In the end darkness would devour all.

The Matrix, alive with the creative energy of the All-Spark, reminded them that beyond the darkness, there was light. When this day passed, another would dawn. Past death was rebirth, for universes no less than individual sparks. When all else was gone, love remained, and endured despite the best efforts of evil to eradicate it. Til all are one.

*-T-F-Rising*

Elita sat at her station watching the indicators. She and Optimus were limiting contact so that he could save energon.

Ironhide came up. "Any news, Prime?"

"No, they're locked in a cell but Darkmoon and his people are afraid to go in there after them. They're trying to keep it that way until we can get there."

Ironhide snorted. "Guess they didn't really think it through too well when they decided to corner a Prime."

"Darkmoon gets caught up in these big ideas and skips the details. It's why his plans never work, but he causes a lot of misery trying. If I have anything to say about it, this is the last time."

Hide nodded. "Yes, Prime."

Wayfarer came in from recharge and took the pilot's station. She cabled to her console and, with a reflex like unshuttering her optics, checked the long range scanners.

"Got him," she said, slowing below cloaking velocity. "Time for us to earn our rations."

Elita gripped her sister's hand. "Be careful."

"Always," the seeker promised. She and Mirage went out the airlock and transformed, then disappeared under a cloak.

Only Mirage knew exactly how much that sensor shadow terrified Wayfarer. It was nothing less than a black hole guided by malevolent sentience, determined to destroy all in its path. It was their job to fly into its maw and out again, to come back with the information that Elita needed to plan their assault.

This was what scouts were sparked to do. As they flew in, they took note of the patterns flown by Unicron's combat air patrol, both the raider ships and the seekers. There were holes in the pattern. Unicron had no quick way to recover his losses.

They closed to visual range. There had recently been a Star Wars marathon on the beach. Unicron in his planetary mode reminded them for all the world of the Death Star. Somehow that comparison pushed the creeping fear aside for a while.

Wayfarer had to be far more careful now. As well as the CAP, they had to worry about Unicron's own sensors as they neared their target.

What had just looked like shadows now resolved into structures the size of skyscrapers. They remembered the fabled living cities of Cybertron's golden age. This monstrosity dwarfed them all. There was room for millions to thrive there, yet vast desert areas were dark and lifeless. Unicron shared his resources jealously, it would seem.

The CAP were flying in and out of a deep equatorial trench. Most of the lights and movement were concentrated in that area. Wayfarer flew the trench, taking note of several fixed ion cannon emplacements.

The trench ended in a massive docking pier. A huge set of doors opened onto the dock.

As they watched, a trine of seekers easily twice Wayfarer's size landed on the wide pier and opened the doors.

Mirage tensed. ::There's Prime!::

Wayfarer recorded every detail of the scene before the doors shut again, knowing Elita would make far more of it than they could. Then, silent and invisible as a ghost, she returned to the _Venture, _guided by her bond to her sister.

*-T-F-Rising*

The two Autobots looked up as the great doors sent a booming vibration through the deck plates. Both of them stood, rapidly onlining systems that had been shut down to save energon. Dozens of warnings scrolled across their HUDs, ignored for now. Their plan had depended on Darkmoon and the other grounders being the ones who tried to extract them from the cell. Seekers wouldn't come in and try to pull them out. They were ranged combatants and they struck in passing or from behind when they had to melee. Optimus and Flareup would have to get out of the cell or the seekers could incinerate them inside it. Once outside, they would be at a great disadvantage in the large, open temple chamber that would give the trine plenty of room to fly. As if that wasn't enough, even if they won that one-sided fight, before their rescuers arrived there was really nowhere for them to go.

The seekers, however, were apparently there only to gloat and sing the praises of Unicron.

When they left, Optimus and Flareup settled back into conservation mode, unable to believe that bit of luck.

A few hours later, Darkmoon came by again. He gestured to the back of the cell. A thin stream of dark energon began to flow from a small hole in the ceiling to gather in a depression in the floor, before overflowing into a drain that opened there.

Darkmoon said, "Unicron has decided to offer you a choice. Accept his gift of life, or wait until you go into forced recharge and awaken out there." He pointed to the sacrificial pillars. "Join us or die."

Prime looked down at the high priest through the cell door. "My choices were all made long ago, Darkmoon. I see no need to revisit them now."

Darkmoon's steps receded, leaving only the slow trickle of dark energon and the sound of their own systems settling. There was nothing for it now except to wait. They shut off their HUDs, there was no need to watch the countdown. Hours passed.

The Pitspawn started gathering. They reminded Flareup of vultures in the old western movies that some of the NEST soldiers liked.

"If we get out of here, I swear to Primus, I'll never take another night in the Commons with Sides and the sparklings for granted again."

He nodded. "Or another run out to the Point with Elita." There was a moment before the sun dropped below the waves when the light was just right to turn the gleaming black of her armor all the colors of the tropical sunset.

"Everyone says this, but it...truly has been an honor, Prime."

"The honor was mine, Warrior."

Flareup could no longer prevent her systems from shutting down. Optimus held out a little longer, but the inevitable result was the same.

*-T-F-Rising*

He awakened to Flareup's screams and curses, and as more systems onlined he realized why. He was shackled to the pillars, and dark energon poured into him through his wrist ports. He could resist it, but Flareup—he reached out for their clan bond, but she was too wrapped up in Arcee to notice. Her twin bond with her sister was her strength, not the mysticism of the Ancient Ones. The _Venture_ was close, so close.

Darkmoon walked over. "A pity you chose to be so stubborn."

Optimus tested his bonds, found them strong enough to hold. "It seems the last time you tried something like this, Elita Prime taught you a healthy respect. Tell me, are you afraid I'll break free, or are you afraid of your master's anger if you fail to deliver another sacrifice on time?"

His strong voice caused a stir among the crowd of acolytes. Few had the nerve to hang helpless at the edge of the Pit, with the sacrificial knife in full view in the high priest's servo, and mock him so fearlessly.

"Only a fool makes the same mistake twice. Had I known the femme was a potential Prime, she would have been properly secured. No matter. Rather idiotic of you for your only leaders to be spark-bonded, isn't it? Yes, Unicron knows about that. Soon, he will devour you both." Darkmoon triggered the dark energon blade.

Optimus met Flare's optics and saw his own defiance mirrored. He tried to cut off his pain sensors, but found that his restraints somehow prevented it. He regretted what was about to flood the link he shared with Elita. ::Love, this is going to get rough,:: he warned.

Elita sent understanding. ::We're coming, Optimus. Hold on. Please.:: She snapped her awareness back to the board in front of her. "We're cutting it fine, Wayfarer."

"I can go right down the middle if you don't want us cloaked," her old friend replied, and she would have done it, too, if Elita had told her they were out of time.

Elita shook her head in apology for her outburst. "Not even you can outfly those cannons."

Pain ripped through the sparkbond. Elita refused to turn away, instead she sent all the strength she could manage through the bond. She had already been through this and survived. Optimus sent back his own determination to hold on until she could get him out.

Wayfarer pushed the cloak to its limits, but dared not let it fall. Their only hope of success lay in reaching the Temple of Unicron undetected.

Knowing that help was on the way, Optimus shut off his vocalizer and endured in silence as Darkmoon carved slowly through his chest plates to reach his spark. He wasn't going to put Flareup through listening to him scream, much less give these fragging glitches the satisfaction. He had never thought he would have been thankful that Megatron had offlined him, but it was the nature of his kind in healing an injury to try to prevent the same thing happening twice. His chest armor had heavily reinforced itself, and that served him well now. There were moments when the agony was so great he was aware of nothing else. It was impossible to keep track of time like that. He was as surprised as everyone else when Elita came visible right behind Darkmoon.

Before anyone could react, she triggered an energon blade and sliced the high priest's head off. She shoved his body into the Pit, and kicked his head in to join it before the light had flickered out of his optics. The next thing anybody knew, another slash freed Optimus even as she activated her force shield to protect them both from massed fire from the Pitspawn Acolytes.

That didn't last long, not after Georgie and Mirage decloaked in the middle of them, blades flashing. Shimmer and Bumblebee were nearer the doors. Panic escalated to utter pandemonium when Ironhide came busting through and started blasting away anywhere he had an opening. His fusion cannon wasn't as powerful as Megatron's had been, but it was fearsome enough fired into an already stampeding crowd. Sideswipe cut Flareup loose and they joined in the mayhem, she was more than happy to burn off the contaminated stuff flooding her systems fighting like a berserker.

Elita sent a wordless apology as she picked Optimus up and jumped from the altar. She dropped to one knee on landing, absorbing as much of the impact as she could, but it still set off a blinding wave of agony. Instantly, Black Team's placement made sense as they joined forces and cut a path back to the _Venture _for all of them.

"Now, Ironhide, we're clear!" She roared over the clamor of battle.

Ironhide let fly from one of his cannons. Two glowing red projectiles arced over the fight, into the sacrificial pit. "Fifteen seconds! GO!" He yelled, switching to autocannons and cutting down mech after mech who was in Black Team's way. Chromia and Arcee had turned to clear the dock, while Red Team were holding the area right around the _Venture_. The ship's guns opened up on any fliers who tried to join the fray. At Ironhide's shout, everyone raced for the ship. Mirage was the last in.

Just as he got to the ramp, a hit rocked the _Venture, _throwing her off the docking pier. Mirage jumped, slipped for a heartbreaking moment as Wayfarer screamed his name—then his axes caught. Ironhide hauled him roughly to safety and slammed his servo down on the ramp control.

Elita shielded Optimus' open wounds with her own body. "That's all of us! Get us out of here!" She shouted.

Wayfarer redlined everything. _Venture _soared for freedom. Sides and Sunny opened up the main turrets from under the ion cannons' arc of fire, discouraging pursuit and taking out as many enemy gun emplacements as they could. Wayfarer jinked crazily to avoid fire from the rest. Elita magna-locked to the deck, holding both Optimus and herself in place for the wild ride.

Then Ironhide's going away presents went off, taking the temple and a lot of surrounding real estate with them—including the remaining ion cannons.

As soon as the shooting stopped, Ratchet shoved Elita out of the way and went to work. Elita fetched up against the bulkhead and leaned her head back, as relief flooded her systems and left her weak. "Head count!" She yelled.

Finally, mercifully, Ratchet was able to bypass whatever Darkmoon had done and shut down Optimus' pain sensors. He held to awareness long enough to hear the roll call and assure himself that none of his people had traded their lives for his. Then he let himself drop into recharge so Ratchet could work.

Elita asked anxiously, "Ratchet?"

"Looks worse than it is. This had to hurt like nobody's business, but you killed the fragger before he had a chance to damage any critical systems. I can fix this."

"Primus be praised." She put a grateful servo on the old healer's shoulder, before she got her legs under her and got to her station in the cockpit, past the cheers and war whoops of the victorious Autobots.

Sunny yelled, "Whoa, Hide, you really did a number on that thing!"

The weapons specialist pulled Chromia into his side as he surveyed his handiwork through the nearest viewport. "That'll give those slaghelms something to think about the next time they get a fraggin' bright idea like that," he said with evident satisfaction.

Sideswipe replied, "As the humans say, mess with the best, die like the rest!" He pulled Flareup onto his lap and kissed her soundly. He was never letting her go again. The creeping cold that had filled her ever since they were taken aboard Unicron finally dissipated in the warmth of his embrace.

A huge secondary explosion blew away a third of the planetoid. Debris and dark energon rained out into space. The whooping and hollering went on halfway to the jump point.

Wayfarer ran a long range scan. The few contacts on their six turned about, clearly recalled to base after that disaster. "How is he, Prime?" She asked Elita.

"Ratchet says he's going to be fine," she said as she locked into her station. She was shaking hard enough to rattle with the closeness of the thing. Just a few more minutes and they would have been too late.

The pilot let out a vent of amazed relief. "I can't believe you pulled that off without a single casualty!"

"Neither can I. Once we decloaked, it was a million to one that any of us got out, but all of us? Blessed be Your infinite mercy, oh Lord of Light!"

"The Primes have always been Primus' chosen. Maybe He didn't approve of the Lord of Chaos trying to take you."

"If you're saying He had His hand over us, there'll be no arguments from me!" Coolant sheeted across her optics, blurring her view of the cockpit and turning the Doppler shift as they transited the jump point into a glorious kaleidoscope.

Wayfarer reached across the console to take her spark sister's hand.

*-T-F-Rising*

A huge cheering crowd was waiting when _Venture _made landfall on Diego Garcia. The few days of downtime on the way home had helped immensely, giving Optimus time to heal some of what Ratchet hadn't immediately repaired, and begin to make peace with a terrible experience. He concealed the lingering pain as the ramp opened and they walked out into the sun, the conquering heroes home from the battle. Ratchet understood that show of strength was necessary, but he didn't like it and stayed close.

The sparklings had been let through to greet their parents, and the rest of the crowd pressed close to a makeshift barrier guarded by NEST troops and city police. Nightstar ran to her parents, quickly followed by the other six. People were waving flags, mostly Diego Garcia but there were a fair few Stars and Stripes and Union Jacks. A brass band from the US Navy was playing. There were yellow ribbons everywhere. People were blowing their car horns and shooting off fireworks. Homemade banners welcomed them back.

Elita said, "Your people truly love you, Optimus."

"No less you, for giving them this victory."

She smiled, but she knew she could never compare in their eyes. No one ever fully trusted a spy and master assassin like her, and that was all right. She served in her way. She had her followers, true, but Optimus Prime they loved and respected near to worship. Elita could not blame them because she loved him with all her spark as well. He was the best of them all and he was her mech.

::How much time do you think this has bought us?:: She asked.

::It isn't over, but Unicron won't be able to do more than harass us until he has time and resources to make repairs. I would say that you bought us at least another year to build our own defenses, maybe longer.::

Lennox snapped off a sharp salute as Optimus passed his position. He returned it before transforming to his alt form for the run up to NEST HQ.

The Tribe had been busy, the common room was full of balloons and posterboard signs. There was music and laughter and light, and Optimus' loved ones surrounded him. Ratchet was a wise old healer who understood the medicinal value of that, so he just told Elita not to let him tire himself out too much.

Flareup gathered her sparklings to her, and snuggled as close to Sideswipe as she could in polite company. She and Optimus shared a look, and neither of them had to say a word. They were home.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Stand My Ground, by Within Temptation. /A.N._


	41. Solid Ground

(Chapter 30—Solid Ground)

_(A.N.: This chapter is one of the few that is definitely M for a reason, bonded Cybertronians doing what bonded couples do. Very sorry to anyone who was upset because there was no warning on the last chapter-it is there now. I uploaded the wrong version. Again, I am very sorry. /A.N.)_

Ratchet couldn't yell at Optimus, because he clearly had not done anything wrong to land in medbay this time. Jolt was staying out of the way, lest he become a substitute target. Only Mikaela was willing to work with the old healer when he got in a mood like that. She was safe from his wrench, and when it came to the yelling, she could give as good as she got. While she was washing up and Ratchet was getting a test kit that he wanted, Optimus heard Kaela tell him, "Save it for the damn Pitspawn, Ratch!"

Ratchet's reply was pitched too low for Optimus to hear.

Kaela replied quietly, "I know, but he _didn't_. Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."

The next sound Prime heard might have been a strangled sob. Whether it was or not, nobody but Kaela would ever know by the time Ratchet came back around the curtain with the test kit. He pulled an energon sample from Optimus' wrist port. It took everything that Prime had not to flinch from that contact, memory was still too raw and too close to the surface.

The energon cooled to the normal blue that it turned after they consumed it. More importantly, the test strip only turned that same shade of blue.

"I think that's got all the dark energon. Flareup is clear, too."

Elita asked, ::May I come in?::

::Yes, of course.:: Optimus reached out to her with a smile as she came in, then he turned to Ratchet. "What's the verdict?"

"You're going to be sore for a while, but you're off the injured list. Work back up to full sparring slowly, or you'll be right back in here. If they don't need you in Admin, the best thing you could do for yourself would be to get out and move around in the sun."

"I think we'll do just that," Optimus said.

Kaela watched them leave then patted Ratchet's shin plate. "He knows how you feel about him, Ratchet."

"He better. Slag it, I'm an old mech. He's supposed to bury me, not the other way around."

"Nobody's burying anyone anytime soon," Kaela said, praying it was true.

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus walked along the beach with Elita at his side. It was too early on a weekday afternoon for too many to be out. They passed a group of sailors out running on the beach. One of them said, "Good to have you back, sir."

"Thanks, Chief, it's good to be back."

Elita watched them continue back to the port, then they kept going in the opposite direction. "Beloved, I am sorry that you had to go through this."

"And I'm sorry that you did. Darkmoon won't be doing it to anybot else."

"No."

"Tell me something."

"What?"

"How did you get up there through that crowd?"

"Well, Wayfarer and Mirage had been there, and they saw you when somebot opened the door. I had time to analyze the images they brought back. There was one way around the edge."

Optimus remembered the layout of the temple. "You did not go _behind_ those pillars."

"I did," she admitted. "There was more room back there than it looked like."

"You couldn't have had more than a toe hold."

"It was enough."

"Obviously so. The rest of your team was already in there before Ironhide kicked the doors in. How did they get in?"

"By following other bots through the doors. It's fairly easy for bots their size to move along the outskirts of a crowd while cloaked. Bots in a crowd usually just ignore it if somebot bumps into them, or assume it was the nearest bot that they can see. No one made any sudden moves until after I took Darkmoon out and drew the crowd's attention."

He thought about making that precarious journey around the very edge of that representation of the Pit, while dealing with the distraction that he had become by that point. "How could anyone possibly—"

She replied, "There's a scout thing—did your Meister ever mention a technique called ice palace?"

"No." She seemed hesitant to go into further detail. Optimus encouraged her, "Go on, Elita."

"An ice palace is...at its simplest, a way to deal with situations that make it impossible to complete a mission. It creates a protected space for the main part of the personality core to run, while allowing a fragment to exist at the same time outside the ice palace. When the situation stabilizes, one dismantles the ice palace and reintegrates the fragment. When people tell you what evil, cold-sparked assassins scouts are—that's what lives in an ice palace. Someone for whom the kill is just another step on a checklist of things that have to happen for the operation to come off. The fragment is the part of ourselves that _isn't _the assassin. The—the part that was freaking out at what was happening to you."

"And that is what you left with me while the rest of you was off saving my life. Elita, could you really have thought I wouldn't understand?"

"Nobot except another scout ever has. I should have realized that you would be the exception that proves the rule," she smiled.

"Tell me the rest of it."

"Some people never leave an ice palace. A fragment isn't a complete personality core. After too long, it fades, and the assassin is all that remains. There were a lot of older scouts who were like that."

"I won't let that happen to you. If your palace ever becomes your prison, I'll get you out. I love you for _all_ of who you are, dark and light together."

Elita had never felt such acceptance and understanding. Suddenly the beach was far too public a place.

::Patience,:: he teased, with a light energy-field caress.

::Keep that up and I may just decide privacy is overrated,:: she warned as she returned the favor.

::I doubt I could ever make you lose control enough to jump me on the beach in front of Primus and everyone, but it would be fun to try.::

::You might be surprised. I've been _waiting_ for Ratchet to take you off the injured list. Patience is in short supply this joor.:: He felt Elita's passion in their link, but more than that, something old and strong and spark-deep. Unicron had taken what was _hers_. She needed to reclaim him, to be reclaimed in return. Optimus had asked for all of her, and that was what she wanted to give, and what she wanted to take. Just as surely, his spark answered that she was _his. _

They were alive and whole and free. Every new moment was a celebration of all that they had nearly lost.

The distance back to their apartment had never seemed longer. They didn't make it any further inside than the lounge floor.

He hesitated only for a split second to open his wrist plates. The memory of waking up linked to Unicron was there, but it was only a memory. Elita was right there in his arms, fields meshed with his, desire and need and love burning in their bond. He pressed his fingers into her wrists until she opened to him.

He vented suddenly when she joined her lines and cables to his.

::?::

He replied with a short flash of the pillar. She answered with an image of slashing his bonds. _::Mine!::_

He locked the connections, his stronger pumps forcing energon through her systems. ::Yours. And you—Warrior. Assassin. _Mine!::_

_::Yours. Oh, yes, yours!::_

For a moment before their sparks merged, he had a sense of her presence in every fiber of his being, just as she became part of him. Then there was no more he and she, only they, only life, only light, only joy, all else forgotten.

Optimus woke before she did and took full advantage of being held within her formidable defenses. There was some pain in his chest, just half-healed cuts protesting. Rather than try to damp it, he used it to spice the pleasure that he sent flooding her body. Already sensitized by their previous overload, she reacted immediately when the corona of his spark teased hers to awareness again. She had once done that for him, it was awakening into pure bliss.

When she came down, he gently disengaged, then lay beside her to just hold her. "Love, trust me enough to let me be for you what you are to me. Let me be your solid ground. Trust me because I've seen real darkness, and I know you are not that. Let me be your anchor. Trust me to accept and welcome everything that you lock away in that ice palace of yours. There's nothing that you need to hide from me even when we're not a nanoklick away from overload. Nothing that you need to be ashamed of in broad daylight because I've been there too." He gave her the memory of the person he had become after seeing one too many piles of clothing and bones lying thrown away in a Chicago gutter like castoff garbage, the person who had chosen to kill without mercy not to prevent it from _ever_ happening again, but certainly to prevent _those two people_ from ever doing it again. To be sure they were no longer a threat to his loved ones or to anyone else. "You'd only ever let the assassin out to stop a monster, Elita."

Other people had told her that, but here like this, she finally believed it when she let go and let herself trust. If fate ever called upon her to be that silent knife in the dark again, she could do her duty knowing she had a home to come back to. The person whose opinion that she most gave a damn about trusted _her._

_A.N.: Chapter title from Answer, by Sarah McLachlan. /A.N._


	42. Milestones

(Chapter 31—Milestones)

(2020—Diego Garcia)

_(A.N.: There is a serious incident involving a near friendly fire accident in this chapter that some people might find upsetting. Also a lot of heated language resulting from that.)_

Annie had her eyes covered. "Can I look yet, Starry?"

"Turn to your left a little bit. OK, now you can look!"

Starry's new alt was a larger ATV, a two passenger version with a cargo bed and roll bars. She had chosen mostly black, with stripes in her mother's cobalt blue. "Starry, you look great! Let me see what your robot form looks like."

Nightstar transformed. The new youngling stood fourteen feet tall, and Annie could see hints of her adult form. She was fully armored now, and she had her first set of guns and a sword. She...definitely was no longer a sparkling.

Annie realized suddenly that she and Starry were going to have to start walking different paths now. They might not always be able to stay together.

"What's wrong, Annie?"

"You're going to have to train all the time now. We're not going to be able to hang out as much anymore."

"Yeah, you'll have more homework after school too."

Sara put one arm around Annie's shoulders and reached up to swat Starry's aft with the other hand. "Growing up's a bitch, but trust me when I tell you it has its moments. You're still kids and it's summer vacation. Go do kid stuff and have some fun."

Annie hugged her mom back, and Sara tried not to think about how tall she was getting. The girl grabbed her helmet and the two of them took off up the street toward the marketplace.

She and Chromia were doing a fund-raiser for Chicago orphans. She grabbed her iPad with her notes on it and went up to the admin building to meet her friend.

She was just cutting across a sandy lot between the residential building and Admin when something flew right over her head and something sharp grabbed at her hair. Not knowing what it was, she rolled to one side and drew her sidearm.

She came up hard against a concrete post, and ended up staring at Skyrocket over the sights of her Beretta.

She pointed the weapon at the ground and engaged the safety, then jumped to her feet. "All right, Maverick and Goose, get your afts down here NOW!" She bellowed in her best drill-instructor voice. Everybody in Admin and both residence buildings heard her. Hell, they probably heard her all the way down at the airport.

The sparklings did just that, and transformed from their apparently newly acquired mini-UAV alts to robot form.

"What kind of fraggin' stupid stunt was that? Skyrocket, I almost SHOT YOU! I thought you were some goddamn 'Con trying to take me out and I was gonna take you with me, do you understand that?"

Maybe it was the yelling, or maybe it was that she had tears in her eyes. The seeker twins apologized all over themselves.

Shimmer and Chromia got down there. Shimmer gave them each a hard swat on the aft and took up lecturing right where Sara left off, just as loudly.

Sara stumbled to a trash can and retched until her stomach was empty.

Chromia asked, "Sara, are you OK?"

"Do I look OK? I pulled a _weapon_ on a couple of damn fuckin' idiot _kids_!" If she'd hurt one of them, she knew she wouldn't have waited for a trial. She'd have shot herself on the spot.

Chromia was the voice of reason. "Yes, of course you drew your weapon, but you came nowhere near firing it. Shimmer and I saw the whole thing. Believe me, if she thought you had meant any harm to her children she'd be raising the Pit from one end of this island to the other. You reacted like anyone with sense would have. For just a moment, my first thought was somebot like Razorbeak, and I powered up my weapons too. Nobody knew they had alt forms! They must have seen the Navy with those little UAVs and decided they were just perfect."

"I don't care how much sense it made! God forbid but if I'd killed one of them I couldn't have lived with myself."

"_Nobot got hurt_, and maybe you scared some sense into them! Anyone would have done the same-with the exception that one of the big mechs might very well have just swatted them out of the sky, and a lot of the troops with more recent combat experience and less expertise with a weapon probably would have fired. We're pranksters, Sara, we just are, but there are limits. Nobody can just shut off battlefield reactions like turning off a water tap when something happens to trigger them. Those two had better learn that fast or else!"

By the time they got up to the common room, Shimmer had banished the twins to their berth rooms and grounded them for a week. Then she lit into Skids and Mudflap, blaming their wild antics for setting the kids a bad example. The Little Twins just happened to be right there at hand when she needed someone to blame for a horrible scare. All the same, they didn't get any sympathy from any of the other mothers there, who had complained before about the bad example thing.

Shimmer asked, "Sara, are you all right? I saw you go down, did Skyrocket hit you?"

"No, he just grabbed my hair. I felt something sharp and I just reacted. Shimmer, I am so sorry!"

"Sara, no! I was there! They _know _better. I'm the one who's sorry, and believe me, they're going to be sorry too if they ever do anything remotely that stupid again!"

Wayfarer told her younger teammate, "Shimmer, if they want to learn to fly that badly at their age, I'll be glad to give them some lessons they'll never forget."

Shimmer's optics brightened. "That's a great idea!"

"Let me talk to Ratchet. I haven't had a lot of experience with sparklings. I want to make sure I don't put them through anything that they can't handle at their size. I think about two hours before dawn would be a good time to have them out on the flight line."

Scout and seeker shared an evil grin, and then Wayfarer went back to Ratchet's office for a crash course on sparkling development.

*-T-F-Rising*

That evening Annie and Starry found Sara sitting on the beach watching the stars come out one by one. They could see she was still upset, so they deliberately made plenty of noise as they walked down to sit on either side of her.

Starry said, "Aunt Sara, Shaker told us what the seeker twins did. I'm sorry they scared you. I don't think they meant any harm, but they just didn't stop and think what you might do not knowing it was them."

"That's the thing; it was just typical kid stuff. There's so much you kids haven't had a chance to do with all the fighting. You have to grow up so fast."

Annie put her head on her mom's shoulder. "That's just the way it is. You didn't, like, start the war. I mean, any of the wars. That would be, y'know, Megatron, and Osama, and Saddam, and Darkmoon."

Starry said, "Yeah, dead dictator, dead nut job, dead dictator, _and_ dead nut job. They're probably all sitting around in the Pit right now going, slag, we had to have been glitched!"

Sara laughed in spite of herself. "You forgot Sentinel, is he a dead dictator or a dead nut job?"

"Nut job!" Starry said, shuddering.

"Yeah, I heard he thought he was God or something. Definitely a nut job," Annie agreed.

"I probably ought to get after you for swearing, you know."

Starry put her arm gingerly around both of them. She was still getting used to her larger frame and she was scared of hurting them. "Probably. But we're still going to swear. So let's don't and say we did."

Sara couldn't help laughing. "Just promise you won't learn any new ones from me. I don't need your mom after me. I know full well your dad thinks it's cute when you cuss."

Starry snickered. "There was this one time he took us to the movies and let us stay up late on the beach 'cause I cussed out the Big Twins. Mom went ballistic when she found out."

Annie said, "But Sunny _was_ being an afthead, and if he was, you know Sides was too."

"Yeah, but I called him it in Cybertronian and that's supposed to be like, worse. I guess like if I swore in English and said the _other_ F-word instead of frag. Or the other S-word instead of slag. Everybody knows it's the same thing so I don't know why it's worse, it just...is. I don't see what difference it makes if you say somebody's an asshat or an afthead or a" [short series of beeps and clicks] "it's all the same word!"

"Yeah, and if you look any of 'em up in the dictionary there's a picture of one twin or another next to it!" Annie said.

Starry nodded. "It's definitely a twin thing."

By then all of them were having a giggle fit.

Starry said, "Oh, did you hear what the Top Gun twins have to do while they're in trouble with their mom?"

"No, what?"

"Flight training with Wayfarer."

Sara figured those two were about to get a rude introduction to boot camp and grinned. "I don't get it. If you can just download an instruction set, why do you have training too?"

"I _wish_ you could download how to do stuff and instantly be able to do it perfectly! Daddy gave me some files before he took me to the firing range, but I still kept missing. He said I need to practice lots before I won't suck. The subroutines help you account for the wind and how much lead to give a moving target, but there's more to it than that."

Sara nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. "There's a moment before you take the shot..."

"Yes! And it's hard to know when that is. But-Aunt Sara-that's why you didn't shoot Skyrocket and it's why you never would have. That-right moment-it wouldn't ever have been there."

Sara nodded, finally accepting what everyone had been trying to tell her all day.

"I have karate, you two have gun fu," Annie said.

"Annie, is your dad teaching you to shoot?"

"No, Uncle Hide is. But don't get mad at him. He wants me to know not to do some jackass stunt with a gun. After I saw what they do I wouldn't ever play with one. I hope I never have to shoot _at _anything but a target, except paintball. But if somebody was going to like, kill me or something, I could shoot if I had to."

"May you never, ever have to," Sara said.

"Like you didn't teach me twelve ways to kill somebody, or disable a bot, with the stuff in my pencil case. When I was in third grade."

"After that perv tried to drag Sherry Graham in a garden shed while she was at her grandmother's house," Starry pointed out.

Sara held onto both of them, tight. "May nobody ever try to hurt either of you."

"Mom, get real. We have you and Dad and Uncle Hide and Aunt Chromia for parents. Nobody would mess with us unless they had a death wish," Annie said. "Now are you going to cheer up or do we have to feed you ice cream?"

Sara said, "I don't know. I think it might take some ice cream."

Starry moved over-and suddenly kicked, sending a coconut crab flying. Not enough to hurt it, just to get it off her. It righted itself and gave her toe plates the same kind of avaricious glare that she imagined Megatron had once given the universe. "EWW I hate those things!"

"It didn't pinch you did it?"

"No but I bet it would have! It was just looking for the best piece of armor to try and steal. That fraggin' _hurts _too, if they get a soft spot between plates." Starry transformed. "Come on, you guys want ice cream and I'm running on vapors."

"I saw you with an energon cube this morning."

"I know, Aunt Sara, but I just had what I would have before. I'm going to need more now I'm bigger."

"Makes sense. We should keep all you kids little. You'd stay cute and we wouldn't have to feed you as much."

"Yeah, but you'd have to walk up to the commons."

"This is true. You're big enough to be useful now."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Starry yelped.

"Yeah, you guys can go to the PX and the laundromat and everything for me now. Plenty of room back there for groceries and laundry bags."

The banter and warm laughter lasted them all the way up to the commons.


	43. Incursion Part 1

(Chapter 32—Incursion Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

_(A.N.: Reference to US Astronaut Sally Ride is intended as a respectful homage to one of my personal heroes, and in keeping with the movies' use of real-life public figures. Someone will hold the position that I reference in the year 2020. In real life, we can't possibly know what the future holds, but Sally left NASA a few years ago to work in the private sector. In this work of fiction, it had might as well be her. The other dignitaries in this chapter are fictional. Sam Seaborn and Josh Lyman are West Wing characters, they aren't mine. /A.N.)_

(2020 – Diego Garcia, Barnard's Star)

Things were far more serious in Ops. Optimus Prime stood beside the catwalk, where Ambassador Mearing and Colonel Lennox joined him in a very secure teleconference with the five world leaders of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as NASA director Sally Ride. For the moment Director Ride had the podium. "Today at 1400 Zulu we received the following subspace transmission from our listening post in the Barnard's Star system." She reached up to maximize a video window on the huge touch screen behind her.

The picture was of poor quality to begin with and pixellated from enlargement. While the subspace comms system that the Cybertronians had provided had made interstellar communications possible, it took a lot of effort to get a small amount of data through. A short text message was one thing. Video was something else entirely.

They watched as a jump window opened and four large ships came through. Optimus stiffened, he had seen that kind of ship before. Had been aboard one, as a prisoner on his way to Unicron.

The new young President of the United States, Samuel Seaborn, and his Chief of Staff Josh Lyman leaned forward for a better look. Russian President Yvgenia Markova, a scientist before she had been propelled into politics by the recent assassination of her father, whispered to the Russian Air Force general beside her. The Chinese premier Li Xian had a very serious expression on his lined face, but gave no further reaction. Newly elected French President Jacques Devereaux had never attended one of these briefings before. He looked startled but but calm. British Prime Minister Catherine Wesley-Stansfield adjusted her glasses and sipped her ever-present tea.

There was a brief pause while the fleet secured from transit, then one of them powered up her guns and the video cut to static.

Seaborn asked, "Prime, can you confirm those are Unicron's warships?"

"They are the same design as the ones I saw," Prime replied. "That isn't a standard Cybertronian hull. There's no other explanation."

Markova said, "They're securing the system, likely as a staging area."

Devereaux asked, "Why do you think so, Madame President?"

"Barnard's Star is just a dim brown dwarf. I don't believe it would be useful as a source of energy for the production of energon, is that right, Prime?"

"That is correct. I concur that there is nothing in that system of any strategic interest except its proximity to Earth. As a flare star without planets for shelter, it would have no other attraction for Cybertronians."

Ride nodded agreement.

Li Xian asked, "What do you anticipate as his next move, Prime?"

"I think it most likely that he will set up a defensible position from which to launch reconnaissance missions to Earth, and to construct a permanent jump point. He sustained a serious defeat. I doubt that he has the resources for a full-scale invasion at this point. This system is rich in resources and, as we saw with the Decepticons, potential slave labor. Obtaining those resources will be a higher priority than outright conquest, for the time being. If he succeeds in establishing a base there, we will face an escalating series of raids and an enemy increasing in power at our expense."

Wellesley-Stansfield asked, "Can we take and hold Barnard's Star?"

Optimus Prime replied, "Take it, yes. That would be costly but possible. Hold it, no. Not yet. Not without a war fleet of our own, Madame Prime Minister. I fully expect Elita Prime and her team to ensure that they have a string of very bad luck establishing their base, but acts of sabotage will not win this war in the long run. The nations of Earth must resolve their squabbles and unite against this common enemy, if any of us wish to survive as free beings."

Seaborn said, "As it stands, we have three choices. Surrender and get used to slavery to Unicron without a fight. Fight him while continuing to fight amongst ourselves, and lose. Or we can grow up, stop expecting less than two hundred Autobots to solve our problems for us, and face this threat as one Earth. If we do that, we can win this war and take our place in the stars."

Markova said, "My respect for the abilities of Elita Prime knows few limits, but realistically, can she buy us enough time to react to this threat? How fast can we put a fleet in space capable of fighting Unicron?"

Seaborn said, "Prime, that's your decision. If we have to reinvent the wheel, I'll have to wait until Unicron starts his raids. Look at Colonel Lennox and Ambassador Mearing. Tell me I won't be able to capture his ships, reverse engineer his weapons technology and arm a fleet that way. But we'll pay a high price for the delay."

"If I turn our weapons technology over to you, Mr. President, I have no doubt that your human gift of ingenuity will create a capacity for destruction that Cybertron never imagined. It will be your choice whether or not to misuse that technology as we did. If you do that, Earth will share Cybertron's fate, Unicron or no Unicron."

Li Xian said, "We have had the ability to destroy ourselves to the last man, woman and child for several decades now, without help from any outside force. What difference does it make if we have our choice of more than one method of suicide? The only question of any importance right now is whether or not we have the will to defeat Unicron. Every other question will either be settled later, or will be moot."

Optimus Prime was silent for a moment, remembering the words of Alpha Trion. _The children of Earth and the children of Cybertron will soon face their greatest challenge yet. Only by acting as one will you prevail._ "As always, Premiere Li, thank you for your wisdom. Very well. From now on we stand as one."

Seaborn said, "As a show of good faith, here's what we have so far. Sally, if I may."

"Certainly, Mr. President."

"Let the _Chicago_ and the _New York City _join _Venture _and _Xanthium II _in the defense of Earth." Seaborn proudly put up pictures of two space ships, clearly warships, resting in underground cradles. "They're within two months of launch, not counting whatever refits we do to incorporate new weaponry."

Wellesley-Stansfield said, "Since we're putting our cards on the table, meet the _Ark Royal _and the _Hood._"

Li Xian said, "The _Celestial Dragon."_

Devereaux added, _"L'Arc-en-Ciel."_

Markova said, "_Saint Peter's Star _and _City of Moscow._"

"Japan, Brazil and Israel are building something as well," Devereaux said.

Seaborn said, "Israel is about as far along as the United States. Brazil has a good hull, but we're going to have to pitch in to help if they're going to be ready to launch any time soon. Has anyone got any intel on what the Japanese are doing?"

Li Xian said, "Their program necessitated ours. I know they have one ship nearly completed and another, possibly two, under construction."

Wellesley-Stansfield added, "MI-6 believes the Germans are also close to launch. I wonder if Mossad's recent actions near Riyadh had anything to do with a Saudi attempt."

Devereaux said, "I've heard the same speculations from my intel operatives, Cathy. We need to combine our programs and bring everybody else on board."

After that the meeting turned to a serious planning session, what they had, what they needed, who was best put in charge of what. After all the politicians that Optimus had butted heads with over the years, he was heartened that the present major world leaders could for once put their differences aside and do what was best for their people.

*-T-F-Rising*

Elita had sensed the seriousness of the situation through their spark bond, though no specifics. She was waiting outside ops when the meeting finally broke up. They stepped into Optimus' office.

"Elita, there's no easy way to say this. They've come. Four of Unicron's cruisers jumped to Barnard's Star today. I need you to find out what they're doing and throw a wrench in it."

"That sounds straightforward enough. We can raise ship in half an hour. Is there anything else I need to know?"

"It's better if you don't."

She nodded, understanding that perfectly. Someone who might be captured received only the information that she needed to know. She commed Wayfarer, ::Get Black Team together for a mission. We're going out to Barnard's Star and kick aft. I'll see you on the flightline in three breems.::

::Sounds fun.:: She felt an echo of Mirage as Wayfarer dropped one link and opened the other.

Elita turned back to her sparkmate. "Not a long time for goodbyes. Lock the door, love."

He did. There was no time for romance, only a quick frantic joining when they knew they might not see each other again in this world. Every time he sent her out, Optimus knew that might be the mission from which she would not return. And he knew if he sent her to her death, he would not be free to go to her.

As close as they were joined, she could not help feeling the guilt and agony that burned through him as if it were her own. ::One way or another, I will always return to you!:: She swore fiercely. ::No matter if I end up space dust at the end of the universe, I will always be right here with you.::

::You'd better be,:: he told her. Living without her after finding her again did not bear consideration.

*-T-F-Rising*

Shimmer and Bee woke their sparklings. Shimmer said, "You guys need to wake up. Bee and I got called out."

"Where are you going, how long will you be gone?" Dragonfly asked.

Bee told her in a string of sound clips, "Some...hole in the wall...called...Barnard's Star, and...however long it takes."

Coolant flowed over his optics and his voice shook as Skyrocket asked, "You're not still mad at us, are you, Mommy?"

Shimmer dropped to her knees and grabbed them both, kissing each of them in turn. "NO, sparkling, I love you and your sister too much to stay mad over something stupid. Don't you understand everybody was furious because we love you and we never want you to get hurt? Now let's get you over to Arcee's place."

Bee popped both of them lightly on top of the head, making them laugh. "Always...love...little nuisances," he said in his own scratchy, broken voice.

*-T-F-Rising*

Georgie took her old cat over to the Lennox place. Scramble would be fine running around the common room, but Fleabag needed medicine several times a day. Sara always took care of him.

"I don't know how long I'll be."

"I got this. Keep safe."

Georgie nodded. "Thanks, Sara."

Sara cradled the cat in her arms and watched her friend fold to alt form on the move. A few moments later Elita Prime's big sleek black alt turned the corner and passed by like a shadow in the night. Sara whispered, "Godspeed."

It was a while after that before Will made it home. He found Sara sitting on the couch with the cat purring on her lap. He sat beside her and put his arm around her. She put her head on his shoulder. "Hell of a day," he sighed.

"What's happening? Black team just rolled out."

"We're in it again, babe. This time it's going to be bad."

"Too bad, they yanked the wrong chain," she said.

He laughed. "You don't even know who it is."

"Don't matter, they'll tell us who we need to kill."

"Damn jarhead."

"Don't you ever forget it, either."

"Those devil-worshipping freaks who captured Optimus last year sent some ships to set up an advance base at Barnard's Star."

"Barnard's Star? Where's that?"

"It's close, and that's about all it has going for it. Little and not even bright enough to see without a telescope, but it's the second closest star to Earth. Optimus expects raids for slaves and resources if they get settled in."

"We're doing something about this, right?"

"Yes. We are."

Sara nodded. That was all she needed to know. They left the cat curled up on the couch cushion as they went to bed.

*-T-F-Rising*

Three days later, _Venture _hung cloaked with the enemy cruisers at the edge of sensor range. Her passengers were crowded into the cockpit trying to figure out what they were doing. They were clearly constructing a jump point, but there was a spherical form taking shape above it. "Some kind of large space station," Mirage said. "This is a flare star. They're infrequent, but if they plan a permanent presence here, they'll need a station of that size to protect themselves from the radiation."

Elita said, "True, but that begs the question why not just jump a safe distance away whenever there is one? As you say, flares are infrequent."

"Unless they're planning to keep something here that they don't want to worry about securing for jump," Wayfarer said.

"Prisoners," Georgie said. "Soon as the prisoners figured out how much of a production it is to jump a big ship, they'd plan an escape during the next one. These bots don't want to transform cells, or worse yet have to jump while the prisoners are on the way to the mess hall."

"Why bother keeping prisoners in a place like this anyway?" Shimmer asked.

Elita replied grimly, "The first generation of human prisoners will be ticking time bombs. Sabotage waiting to happen. They'll plan on bringing abductees confined here to serve as breeding stock, and take the children away before they are old enough to remember being anything but slaves. Human generations are so short it wouldn't take them a vorn to start a slave population."

Georgie growled, "In my last life, my grandparents were born slaves. Never again. NEVER again!"

Bumblebee played a Galactica clip of Starbuck, "So say we all."

Mirage said, "We can't let them get far enough along to install shield generators. But I _am_ thinking the more resources and effort that we let them put into it before we destroy it, the better. Not only that-for purposes of getting out again, I'd prefer they grew complacent before we make our move."

Elita had to agree with that. Right now they were doubtlessly on alert, expecting an Earth reaction to the loss of the spy satellite. If a little while went by with nothing happening, it was possible that they would think it had been chalked up to a malfunction and that they hadn't been noticed entering the system.

Barnard's Star only had a few asteroids as natural satellites, possibly wanderers captured by the star's gravity. They took refuge on one of those to avoid the chance the stellar distortion caused by their cloak might be noticed.

Mirage monitored the enemy's radio transmissions, and as he had hoped, after a few more days their vigilance tailed off. Their seekers were still flying a standard CAP but he was pretty sure with their cloak they could evade it.

The third day, he picked up transmissions from one of the cruisers calling in her patrols and securing for jump. "Prime, one of the cruisers is preparing to leave the system."

"Returning for more materials?" But Elita sounded doubtful of that even as she said it.

Wayfarer said, "If they were just going back home to pick up a load, they'd have left their seekers here."

Elita touched on her sparkbond. She and Optimus had learned it was the most secure possible method of communication. ::Love, one of the cruisers just jumped, and took their CAP with them. They may be headed your way.::

::We'll give them a nice warm welcome if they drop by,:: he replied.

::We'll take advantage of their reduced numbers and make our move while they're changing shifts. I'll see you in a few joors.::

::Be safe.::

::Yes, Prime,:: was her smart reply, accompanied by a wave of warm emotion. ::You too.::

(continued in Part 2)


	44. Incursion Part 2

(Chapter 32—Incursion Part 2)

Optimus sent the warning out about the cruiser. The whole system was soon on alert.

When it jumped near the asteroid belt, it was spotted by some miners trying their luck prospecting out there. They hid in a test shaft they were digging and shut down everything they could, waiting for it to get a safe distance away before they called their home base on Mars. Because the alert had gone out, their report shot straight up the chain.

The cruiser avoided the base on Mars, but their trajectory was monitored all the way in. When they tried to raid a small island off the coast of Bangladesh, the Autobots were waiting for them and so were a couple of US and Russian missile carriers. Just like the Decepticons before them, the seekers who stayed in the air quickly learned to fear Tomahawk missiles.

Several landed to find a small village inhabited not by villagers but by Optimus Prime's Red Team-both sets of twins. Red Team was unmistakably a heavy front-line combat team. While Blue Team _could_ go toe to toe with most enemies, they were ranged combat specialists, which was why Prime had deployed them outside the village.

Prime and the Big Twins closed with a seeker trine while they were still trying to figure out where the locals were.

To their surprise the trine combined into a gestalt form almost as tall as Prime and much heavier. One huge fist slammed into Sunstreaker, sending him flying into a hut. While the gold-colored mech was trying to get disentangled from the debris, the combiner leapt at him with an ax.

Prime skidded into the way, barely managed to get hold of the combiner and threw him off balance just enough for Sunny to roll clear. The ax blade couldn't have missed him by an inch.

Sideswipe jumped on the combiner's back, slamming both his blades home, but the gestalt's armor was thick enough that he didn't do any real damage. Roaring with pain, the combiner threw him off.

That gave the Little Twins an opening for their infamous cannonball. Skids gave Mudflap a boost, his brother tucked into a roll and kicked the combiner in the aft. It knocked him to his knees, but he came back around with the ax and cut a deep slice in Mudflap's side. Skids dragged him to safety under cover of another onslaught from Sides.

Optimus activated his energon ax, forcing the combiner to block. Their axes locked, and metal groaned as it turned to a contest of strength. The Big Twins got their legs under them but couldn't get back into the melee for fear of hitting their Prime.

Sunstreaker saw another couple of seekers coming in low over the treetops. It was a bad angle. He had to shoot _right_ over Prime's head. But the autocannon burst made the two seekers pull up. Skids was less confident of his marksmanship, he held his fire till they were right overhead.

That was when Ironhide opened up on them and blew one of them apart in midair with a fusion cannon blast.

Then a sharp cry from Mudflap drew Skids attention from the fighting. Energon was pouring out of the gash.

Skids could see a major line cut, but he couldn't get to it for the damaged armor plate. "Sorry about this, bro." He ripped the plate off. Mudflap screamed, but all Skids had time to worry about was pinching off the cut line. It was still leaking, but not to the same life-threatening extent. He joined their wrist lines, sharing energon with his injured brother.

Prime's ax bit deep, killing one of the trine outright and forcing the other two out of combination. He turned on the nearest one, leaving the other to the Big Twins. Still trying to fight in spite of a promise to let them live if they surrendered, but in shock from the loss of their trine mate, they were no longer any challenge to the three veteran warriors.

Blue Team had a little excitement with the last seeker, he had landed and tried to take Chromia hostage. He ended up with a faceful of her auto-cannon while Arcee pounced on him with her blades from forty feet away. Neither sister was exactly sure who should get credit for that kill, and neither much cared.

They gathered in the village. Optimus called in a medevac for Mudflap. Kaela came in with the chopper, online with Ratchet back on Diego Garcia. She sealed off the damaged energon line, then Skids helped him onto a carrying platform slung under the chopper and made sure he was safely strapped on. Mikaela gave Skids a cube of energon, he was dangerously low also.

"Is everyone else OK?"

"Yes, get him out of here in case there's another wave en route."

"Roger that!" Kaela signaled the pilot to take off. She hitched her safety line to a cable and rode the platform with him, trading wisecracks and helping him stay calm.

The rest of them were delayed getting the dead enemy bots out of the village, but the attack was over.

Mearing had the pleasure of informing them that a missile fired from a boomer out in the Indian Ocean had taken down the enemy cruiser.

*-T-F-Rising*

At Barnard's Star, there was a panic when the cruiser went down. _Venture _took advantage of it to draw in close. Elita carefully plotted two firing solutions, then Wayfarer dropped the cloak briefly, just long enough for Elita to get the shots off. The first destabilized the space station, then the other blew the jump point below it, taking the station with it. The explosion showered the three remaining cruisers with debris.

One took an engine hit and yawed into its neighbor, severely damaging both.

The third opened up on the position where they had decloaked. All they hit was some floating debris, but a piece ricocheted and hit _Venture_.

Wayfarer cursed as the cloak went down. ::Gunners fire as soon as you acquire a target, cloak is down, repeat cloak is down!::

Elita activated the ship's point defenses then took the forward guns. ::How badly are we damaged? I can't link up with the rear cannons.::

::I don't know, I'm getting gibberish from damage control. Shimmer, Georgie, get into the rear compartment and find out how bad we got hit. I don't dare jump if we took too much structural damage!::

Mirage targeted the leader of a seeker trine and fired a long burst, taking the first kill. ::Don't take all cycle. There are a LOT of them out there!::

Georgie had to wrench the rear compartment hatch open. Shimmer told her, ::Get that rear gun turret online before they realize we have a blind spot!::

She went on back, leaving Shimmer to work on the damaged area.

Shimmer soon discovered that the ship had depressurized because an I-beam had gone through the hull. It had then demolished a rack of switches serving most of the ship's rear systems. The breakers had tripped in time to prevent a cascading failure that could have left them dead in space. She booted the I-beam out the way it came in, and bent the hull back.

When she described the damage to Wayfarer, the pilot asked, ::Are the energon lines compromised?::

::Doesn't look like it, no! It missed all the structural steel, too! We should be fine to jump!:: Shimmer quickly routed power to the rear guns in time for Georgie to shoot back at a seeker that had dropped in on their six, forcing him to back off.

Wayfarer yelled, ::Secure for jump!:: As soon as they were clear of the star's gravity well, she pulled the jump controls toward her-and nothing happened.

Elita said, ::Some of the midships breakers must have tripped. Take the forward guns, I'll check.::

Bumblebee screeched as a hit flung him out of his turret, into the main part of the ship. She saw that he was still moving, but hadn't time to check how badly he was injured.

She opened the breaker box. ::They're not just tripped, they're blown out!::

::Slag! OK, bring a cable off Forward Seven and run it straight into the jump controller. And Primus grant we didn't just fry the jump controller!::

Elita did as she was told. ::Bee! Are you OK?::

He nodded affirmative. Both of them grabbed the closest support beam as Wayfarer jinked crazily to avoid getting caught in a deadly pinwheel. Bee couldn't hold on and slammed into the bulkhead.

::Elita, any time now would be great!:: Wayfarer yelled.

::GO!::

Wayfarer tried again. A missile exploded where they had been a second before as they jumped.

That took the prize for the roughest jump Elita had ever made. She got over to Bee and couldn't do more than magna-lock to the deck and brace him against the bulkhead to make sure he didn't get thrown around the compartment anymore. Someone screamed in the back, but she couldn't tell if it was Shimmer or Georgie. Aristocratic, poised Mirage swore like a casteless stevedore and Wayfarer was screaming at him to hold on. Then something slammed into the side of Elita's helm and knocked her into recharge.

The next thing she knew, it was pitch dark except for a couple emergency lights and five really worried pairs of blue optics. And Optimus was scared to death. She decided to try to calm everyone down at once. ::I'm OK, just got my bell rung. Wayfarer, report.::

::We're dead in space, about half a lightyear from Earth. We don't have comms. Or anything else for that matter.::

::OK, get me the best coordinates you can and I'll pass them to Prime. One of the ore carriers can come after us. Bee, are you all right?::

::I think so. Shrapnel from the turret. Lots of small stuff.::

::Who screamed in the back?::

Georgie said, ::That would be me, when the fuckin' jump engine blew all to hell and just about barbecued me in the gun turret.:: She had the carbonized paint to prove it, and if she was swearing in English she was still pretty shaken up.

Mirage just pointed his work light at what was left of his turret-one big gaping hole. He had a deep gash in his palm plate where he had managed to grab something as he was blown out of the ship.

Wayfarer returned with coordinates that Elita knew would be good enough to get the ore carrier within personal radio range. She passed them on. ::Our mission was a success but I've had more elegant successes. What happened on your end?::

::It was a slave raid, but we had their trajectory in time to evacuate the village they chose and trap them. Mudflap was hurt pretty seriously but he's going to be all right.::

::They already have at least one holding area for slaves, or they wouldn't have staged a raid until their station was completed. And how did they know to target that village?::

::Probably got the information from the Internet. The ore carrier is en route and they estimate they'll reach your position in about four breems. They'll take you to the Moon Base.::

::Better than I was expecting a little while ago, I admit.::

Elita stayed where she was on the deck until the ore carrier _Pride of Iacon _arrived. They took _Venture _into their empty cargo bay. The miners' healer, her old friend Fixer, checked her out. ::What did you do to yourself this time, Elita?::

She smiled warmly. ::You can blame this one on an exploding jump engine. I think a piece of the housing hit me in the helm, but my self-diagnostics are fine. See to my team first. Bumblebee was hurt the worst, impact and shrapnel. Mirage has a servo injury and possible shrapnel damage as well. Check Georgie for burns.::

By the time the _Xan II _was able to bring them home from the moon, everyone was getting back to normal except Mudflap, who was out and about but still moving slowly. Considering the Acolyte combiner had almost chopped him in half, nobody blamed him.

This time there wasn't a huge fuss over their homecoming, for which Black Team was grateful. None of them were feeling up to it. Elita was glad to be able to simply take the back streets and slip through the night back to the compound. She hoped to spend some time with her sparkmate before she fell into Ratchet's clutches. Georgie turned off to the Lennox place to get her cat. Shimmer and Bee outpaced Elita, anxious to see their sparklings. Mirage and Wayfarer went to the beach for some privacy before they got caught up in the common room crowd.

Elita sensed her sparkmate's nearness and turned toward the admin building rather than the residence. Optimus was waiting for her in the shadow of the wall. She transformed and ran to him, each reassuring themselves that the other was safe.

"How's the headache?" He asked.

"Nothing that a good long recharge won't fix," she sighed.

"I hear that."

"What exactly gave Red Team more fight than we've seen in a while?"

"A seeker trine that formed a gestalt. They nearly killed Sunstreaker before Sides and I could get to them. Honestly, I was lucky to get a kill strike on one of them and break the gestalt or we might have paid a higher price than we did."

_"Venture _is beyond repair."

"You brought your team back, that's what matters. _Venture_ was too underpowered to take on those cruisers. You'll command the next destroyer off the rails at Mars Base. I'm also assigning some human specialists to Black Team."

"Optimus, what am I supposed to do with humans on Black Team? In space? I'm not getting good people killed for no military advantage."

"Aboard ship, they can do absolutely anything we can do if the equipment is sized for them. You haven't fought side by side with them the way I have. Give them a chance to integrate with your team. If you're not happy with the way they work out after a couple of training missions, I'll reassign them."

"This is politically motivated, isn't it?"

"In part. All the ships of the new defense fleet are going to have fully integrated crews. Ours can't be any different. But I really do believe that Kenoi will be an asset to you. I've worked with this man for nearly as long as I've been on Earth."

"Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" She smiled, resting her aching head on his shoulder. "That's what I needed to know."

"Let's get you in and have Ratchet look at you. The sooner he's done, the sooner you can get some recharge." They walked through the commons on the way to Medbay, where several people congratulated Elita.

Ratchet ran several scans and diagnostics. For a scout, who lived and died by her hacking ability as often as anything else, a head injury was doubly serious. Fortunately the headache was from damage to her helm itself. He ordered her to her berth for a couple of days. She asked about the rest of her team, and was told that Fixer had already done everything that needed doing for all of them.

She had thought she would be out as soon as she hit the berth, but she lay there for a long time with her optics shuttered listening to the familiar sounds of home. Optimus had a long discussion over a private line, she suspected Seaborn was on the other end but she did not ask, and she certainly did not want to know what the conversation was about. She agreed with Optimus' decision not to tell her too much about what went on in admin, not at at that level anyway. It was too much of a security risk as long as she was leading Black Team. Still she could not help speculating, and with war on the horizon, that was not an occupation conducive to a peaceful recharge.

After a while, Optimus came to the berth. The hum of the fluorescent lights ceased. "Love, do you need me to get Ratchet to do something about that headache so you can rest?"

"Nothing he can do about it. It hurts because it's getting better," she said quietly.

"Well done, Elita. You got the job done and brought your team home."

"I lost us a ship."

"We'll lose the _Xan II_ also, if we have to put her up against those cruisers. It isn't what they were built to do. We need those destroyers on the line. But Roadbuster tells me that they will be ready soon. Unicron lost one cruiser, and two more are badly damaged; we know that he's having trouble replacing them. We will have three destroyers off the rails shortly. We came out ahead, where that is concerned."

"True."

He gathered her close, and made himself stop worrying because he didn't want to have Elita pick up on it and give her more reason to stay awake. After a while, she finally dropped off. Her mate lay awake thinking about the irony that he could guard her in the safety of their own berth, yet he had no choice but to send her into battle lightyears away.


	45. Welcome to Black Team

(Chapter 33—Welcome to Black Team)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2020 - Diego Garcia, Mars)

A couple of days later, Elita got the all-clear from Ratchet and went down to Ops to meet her new human teammates. Kenoi she had met in passing, he had high enough rank in NEST that his work often brought him there. But they had never had occasion for more than polite military greetings.

When she entered the room, one of the four humans snapped, "Prime on deck!"

Instantly all four of them snapped to and saluted. Elita made a quick assessment as she returned it. They had absolutely no fear of her-respect, yes, clearly, but not the awe or terror that she saw in the eyes of many humans. "At ease."

"Second Lt. Jeremy Kenoi reporting for duty, Prime."

"Good to have you aboard. We have a few klicks before we're due to meet the rest of the team, so why don't you start by telling me a little about yourselves."

Kenoi started off, "My background before NEST was with the United States Army Rangers. My job is to disappear into the countryside and accomplish my objective, whether that's scouting or eliminating an enemy asset. I can operate in just about any environment you'd find-on this planet anyway."

The dark-skinned man next to him said, "Sgt. David Langston, Prime. I've been Lt. Kenoi's spotter for several years now."

Next in line was a young woman with olive skin, and short curly dark hair. "Ruth Goldstein, Prime. I am Israeli, until recently I worked with our Mossad. Now my government has assigned me here. Defending my country against those who would have us disappear is nothing new to me. Now I will be doing the same thing for my world. I am a surveillance and computer specialist, but I am also an expert marksman as well as a Krav Maga instructor."

The last man was a little Japanese fellow. He bowed. "Elita Prime. I am Masumoto Shiro. I am an aerospace engineer with the Japanese Space Service. I am also familiar with many types of explosives. I have also competed in mixed martial arts tournaments."

She checked the Internet. "World champion in your weight class."

"I have that honor."

"You'll be a little out of your weight class."

"Yes, Prime," he laughed. "I'll leave taking on mechs hand to hand to my teammates. For that, I'll depend on explosive rounds."

Elita asked, "What led you to volunteer for this assignment?"

"You're the best, you need the best, we're it," Langston replied with a cocky grin. But nobody called him a liar, either.

Kenoi shook his head a little, but said, "If Col. Lennox says I'm the best fit with your outfit, I won't argue with him, Prime. It's an honor to work with you."

Masumoto said, "I want to get out there sooner rather than later, and to serve my world. With my particular skills, this is the best way I can do both."

Goldstein said, "When I was asked by my superior to be the one to volunteer, it was both an honor and an opportunity. I look forward to the challenge."

On the downside, none of them had any zero-g experience. They would fix that.

The rest of the team started to file in, and Elita introduced them as they showed up. All except Mirage and Wayfarer already knew and had served with Kenoi and Langston.

Elita said, "This will be nothing new to our NEST personnel, but I don't know how familiar the rest of you are with how Autobot military teams work. Tribal war bands are the closest human parallel that I've been able to find. We're family and close friends. That sets NEST apart from other Earth militaries, because they've worked around our unit structure. Our belief is the closer the bonds, the harder you'll fight for your team. Only honor comes before the lives of our loved ones. You probably know that I am Optimus Prime's sparkmate. In human terms, we're married. The same is true of Wayfarer and Mirage. Shimmer and Bumblebee are bonded. That's really a closer match to a human marriage because they could still split up if they ever wanted to. As you can see, we just don't have the fraternization concept that most of you are used to. If either of you think that the dynamics will make it difficult to work with this unit, I understand, and now is the time to say so."

Goldstein saw Langston looking at her and laughed. "Sorry, I have a husband and a little boy back home in Tel Aviv."

Langston grinned. "Damn!"

"I admit it isn't what I'm used to, but I've seen plenty of footage of Autobot teams in action. I'm open-minded to anything that successful," she said.

Kenoi said, "I don't see that as a problem for this particular outfit, Prime. Some male personnel might have difficulty with a female human on a team like this, just because we've never worked with one before. But when I heard Mossad Krav Maga instructor, that was good enough for me."

Masumoto nodded. "Likewise. While we're putting cards on the table, I'm gay. I have a relationship back home as well. Will that be an issue?"

Elita said, "Not for us."

Kenoi said, "It hasn't been an issue in the US military since 2011. Personally, as long as you can _shoot_ straight, I couldn't give less of a damn whether you _are_ straight, gay, bi, whatever."

Langston nodded.

Goldstein said, "It makes no difference to me either."

Elita said, "All right. We're going to be training pretty intensely to get you up to speed with zero-g operations. We'll be doing training missions on the moon as well as on Mars, also on Mars we'll be getting you familiarized with our new ship while it's under construction. Wheeljack has your equipment over at his lab , and you'll talk to him about anything else you need. Then, if you two could familiarize Goldstein and Masumoto with the base, we'll meet back here after lunch."

They stood and snapped, "Yes, Prime."

"Dismissed."

The four of them left.

Georgie said, "I'm glad we got Kenoi and Langston. They're really good. Kenoi was senior on our team on my first mission, actually."

Shimmer said, "Yes, the one where we rescued Sunny and First Aid and the sparklings. If he's more than thirty or forty feet away from you and he wants you dead, you're dead. When they say one shot, one kill, they mean it. There were three sniper teams with us. Georgie, Bee and I closed with the 'Cons, while they had positions on a ridge. They accounted for as many as we did."

Bee and Georgie nodded agreement.

Bumblebee paused, assembling sound clips. "Remember that…Sam and Will…killed Starscream."

"Just the two of them?" Mirage asked.

"Sam, mostly. He had a…grappling cable…and a boom stick…Que had given him before. He used the cable…get up there…jammed the boom stick…right his face. I'm not exactly sure…Will…got mixed up in it somehow. Anyway…got there in time…keep them from a nasty fall…but…that was their…kill."

Georgie said, "Don't make the 'Cons' big mistake. Don't underestimate humans because they're smaller than you. If they can't do something with their bare hands, they'll find or make a tool to do it with, and/or get a bunch of other humans to help. It's what they do."

"Prime told me that they can do anything we can do aboard ship, if things are built their size. I'm starting to understand what he meant. Georgie, I understand that you were a human in your last life? And that you remember all of it?"

"Yes. Shimmer and I met during the Battle of Chicago."

"You saved my life!"

"Right place, right time. Anyhow, I was hurt pretty bad when my building blew up, and Shimmer took care of me. But I was really old for a human by then anyway. I eventually died of old age. These guys decided to name a new sparkling after me. I really thought that was a nice thing to do, by the way.

But I was given the choice to come back and be reincarnated as a spark instead of a soul this time. The Powers that Be said I could help both sides understand each other. And my family is here, anyhow. See, when I was human I'd been married twice and outlived both husbands, but they both had already moved on a long time ago instead of waiting for me. This isn't anything to let out, though, Mirage and Wayfarer."

Mirage said, "Oh, I can quite imagine the public relations nightmare."

Wayfarer asked, "What do humans think happens? They have so many different beliefs."

"That's the thing, there are all kinds of religions. And religion is one of the biggest reasons why humans fight wars. Some believe there's an afterlife where good people go to heaven and the evil go to hell. Others believe in reincarnation. The thing is, sometimes they don't look at other religions as seeing the same thing from different angles. A lot of the time, they think they're right and everybody else is wrong. And a lot of them believe it's their duty to spread their religion whether anyone else likes it or not."

Shimmer asked, "What did you see?"

"I don't have enough words in any language I know. Light. Life. Joy. My mother was there-and my grandparents on her side, all kinds of relatives who crossed over before I was even born. And go or stay, it was good either way, because that's our real home. All the things I did in my last life that I was sorry for, all the things I wished I'd done and hadn't, I was able to learn my lessons from them and move on. I was in the presence of...pure love. I was accepted, flawed as I am, and all that Presence wanted was for me to be able to become the best person I can ever be. I really believe if you want to be religious, learn to love. Because the closer you come to perfect love, the closer you come to God. Was His or Her or Their name Primus or Jesus or Gaia? I have no idea. I don't care. I only know I was _blessed._ I think the most important thing that I learned there is that we all end up in the same place. And there are no limits there on what anybody can become. I _met _Nova Prime. He actually was the one who told me about my choice to come back. I'm sorry, Shimmer. I don't think I'll ever be able to really tell you what I saw there. Just that it was wonderful. But I thought all Cybertronians remember past lives."

Elita said, "Past lives, yes, but not the other side. And we don't remember as much. Sometimes very little at all. I have some vague memories of the slave days, mostly of my Quintesson master who treated me fairly reasonably as long as I knew my place. I was killed in the early days of the rebellion, I think the Battle of Rhyden. If I'm right about that, nearly half a million years passed between that life and this. I don't know anything about that time."

Shimmer said, "I wasn't Cybertronian. I don't know what I was. I have memories of swimming and singing with my family, and hunting other sea creatures. I wonder if I might have been a dolphin or an orca, but how can I know? It may have been some other species on some other world entirely. But sometimes when I first come out of recharge, I can still almost hear that singing and see sunlight filtering down through the water. It's been that way ever since I was a new sparkling. I don't remember where I was after that either."

Wayfarer said, "I just had random flashes of memory from a couple previous lives, nothing that I really cared too much about. It wasn't the places that mattered or what I did there. But the _instant_ I met Mirage, I knew what he was to me and that we had spent more than those two lives together." She reached for her sparkmate's servo and he nodded agreement.

Elita said, "I think this is our first life together. When I first met Optimus Prime, I knew everything that was missing in my life, was right there. I felt complete for the very first time."

Shimmer glanced at Bee. Becoming sparkmates was a huge, irrevocable step and she didn't want to get it wrong. But that was how she felt about the yellow mech. That he completed a part of her she hadn't even known needed to be completed.

*-T-F-Rising*

Wheeljack was waiting when Kenoi brought the new Black Team recruits in. He had their space suits there, and a guy from NASA to teach them how to use them. This was cutting edge technology, which meant to Kenoi that it was up to them to work the bugs out. But they did look sharp. The bulk was a thing of the past. The suits were a simple black one-piece design, individually fitted, and armored well enough that they weren't likely to get holed if they just got snagged on something random. They would protect against small arms fire and most shrapnel. Wheeljack had upgraded them to run on energon fuel cells, which were the lightest power source available. He had incorporated miniaturized ion blasters into the gloves, holdout weapons unlikely to be disarmed or even spotted on a casual inspection, but still packing a punch equal to a sabot round. There was also a force shield, it was power hungry so it could only be used briefly but everyone immediately saw the use in it.

The life support was good for three days of constant use, with recovery of oxygen from carbon dioxide. If there was oxygen available either free or in a carbon or hydrogen compound in an otherwise hostile atmosphere, or underwater, the suits could replenish their own supply more or less indefinitely.

When Wheeljack told them about their personal cloaking devices, the humans exchanged grins that gave the inventor chills.

Then he showed them their new rifles. Designed self-contained in order to be used in vacuum or atmosphere, they could chamber NEST-standard high-impact AP explosive rounds as well as a new laser guided mini rocket.

He had specialized equipment for each of them as well, compact tools and equipment for Masumoto, a hacker's deck for Goldstein, and scanners that would help the two snipers with tracking and judging a long-distance shot. The last item was something he had built personally, not even letting Mikaela help until he needed a human to test it. He handed a box to Kenoi.

"I recalled your remark in Azerbaijan about armor plating and your knife. This is an energon blade designed to use a standard fuel cell. That will power it for only fifteen seconds."

It had the shape of a traditional Apache combat knife, but the blade looked like some reddish metal and the hilt was heavier than it looked, with a control button near the blade. Kenoi knew what an energon blade was when he saw one. With only human strength behind it, that blade would burn through an inch of Cybertronian armor plating. Wheeljack had just handed him the ability to use his skills to take out nearly any of his people. The enormity of that trust floored him. This was the kind of thing one brother gave another.

"That's plenty of time."

"May it bring you safely home."

"Thank you." Kenoi knew Wheeljack wouldn't have entrusted him with such a thing unless Optimus Prime had given permission. Having earned that permission meant a great deal to him. He dug in his pocket for a coin. "Here, it's real bad luck to give a knife. You need to sell it."

Wheeljack subspaced the coin. Logic be damned, he had been around long enough to know better than invite bad luck.

*-T-F-Rising*

They ended up poking around the _Ark _on their first training mission. Wheeljack wanted to see if any of the ship's computer systems could be salvaged for reuse. They took the time to look around the Apollo 13 landing site from outside the fence that had been put up to preserve the historic first human footprints on the moon. Then they followed Armstrong and Aldrin's path up over the ridge to the crash site.

The graves of the ship's crew stood in stark relief against the gray moonscape that made Georgie think of the rows of white crosses overlooking the beaches of Normandy. She quoted softly, _"Here dead we lie because we did not choose/ To live and shame the land from which we sprung./ Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;/ But young men think it is, and we were young."*_

For a long moment they stood in silence, honoring fellow soldiers lead to their deaths by a damned traitor. Then quietly they got to work.

The humans started coming in handy immediately, climbing around in spaces and voids where a sparkling could hardly have fit. Masumoto was in his element. Of them all he knew precisely what Wheeljack wanted and how to retrieve it. From the damage to parts of the ship that had not already been salvaged, he doubted much would be reusable, but the first salvage crews had recovered identifiable bodies, not scattered remains. There was always the possibility the computer components had fared as well. At the end of a long day, they packed what they found into a shipping container and Elita transformed to carry it back to Moon Base clamped to the top of her alt.

*-T-F-Rising*

The same ore carrier that had rescued Black Team before now gave them a ride out to Mars Base. There always seemed to be a bunch of (relatively) short stocky minerbots around to rubberneck at the first alien members of a scout team they'd ever heard of. At the moment they were learning zero-g combat maneuvers in the empty cargo hold, Elita versus everyone else. The new guys were learning rapidly why you didn't mess with a Prime, and why teamwork was essential if you ever did decide to do anything so stupid.

Elita got careless for just one split second. A paintball exploded right between her optics and the scoring computer registered a kill. She expected Kenoi or maybe Langston, but when she got the paint off, it was Goldstein. The Israeli nodded thanks for a good match.

Bee dragged himself to his feet and helped Shimmer up, where both of them had just got unceremoniously backhanded into a corner. Both of them were OK but in no hurry to repeat that. The last time Bumblebee had been hit that hard had been a go-round with Barricade.

Money was changing hands among the miners. Most of the bets had been on Elita. Goldstein had just made a couple of the miners who had bet on the long shot really happy.

Elita said wryly, "What's the lesson from that?"

"Never lose track of the little squirt with the rifle," Wayfarer teased. She was none too happy with her sister right at that moment for "decapitating" her with a sparring blade.

Elita gave her a mocking salute. "Other than that? Is there a way you could have accomplished the same thing without losing two, probably three people?"

Langston said, "In these close quarters? Probably not. If you'd seriously been fighting for your life, it would have been definitely three, and probably Masumoto-san and me as well."

"Begs the question why we started a close-quarters brawl with you in the first place," Kenoi said. "If you were a high enough value target to be worth it, I'd have shot you as soon as I saw you."

"You're assuming I didn't start it," she shot back.

"Then I'd have run like hell till I got the chance to take my shot. We'd have to be stupid or desperate to take you on in a straight up fight, especially in a confined area like this, unless we really were in a position of accepting heavy losses and taking you down with us. The smart money was on you. We got lucky Goldstein took you down when she did."

Elita thought about that. The NEST mindset was that heavy losses were often acceptable if the objective was worth it. For the first time she really understood the reason why there were so many pictures on their memorial wall. It wasn't that people made too many mistakes or that they underestimated their enemies. No, they sometimes went out on a mission _knowing_ they were going to take fifty or eighty percent casualties, but that those lives were never lost in vain because the survivors would get the job done. Victory bought at the cost of blood. _Here dead we lie because we did not choose/ To live and shame the land from which we sprung. _

At that moment she forever stopped thinking of humans as sparklings who needed to be protected. They were fully her equals, brothers and sisters in arms fighting together for the world that was now home to all of them. That was what Optimus had been trying to tell her all along. She owed them all, humans and bots alike, to be a leader worthy of their dedication and courage.

"Wayfarer, Mirage, your timing was way off. If one of you goes down, you both do-might as well make the best of it and learn to fight with your bond wide open. Once you do, you won't distract each other, you'll fight as one. Mirage, you've seen the Sisters and the Big Twins."

"My fault, not his," Wayfarer said. "I'm still doing that double-vision, echo thing. This time it would've got us killed."

"It isn't easy but you are getting better. We'll keep working on it. Bee, Shimmer, watch your spacing. If I can take you both out with one shot I'm going to do it."

Two chastened bots chorused, "Yes, Prime."

An announcement came over the loudspeaker in Cybertronian, "Secure for jump in one breem."

Masumoto said, "Pardon me, I didn't quite get that."

Langston translated, "Jump in 8.3 minutes. You'll never be able to speak Cybertronian-more than baby talk, anyhow-but you can learn to understand it when you hear it just fine."

Kenoi asked, "What's the procedure for jump on a ship like this?"

"If there's a serious problem during jump, it can get pretty violent. Ordinarily I'd say strap in, but there's nowhere. We'll magna-lock to the deck or a bulkhead, so you won't have to worry about us getting knocked around the bay. Secure any gear you've got lying around, find somewhere to attach your safety line and hang on. Or, can any of the rest of you magna-lock in alt form?"

No one could. Elita could in her primary alt, but that wasn't helpful because her Cybertronian alt form didn't have a suitable cab for human passengers to ride out a rough jump. Masumoto pointed out an area in the forward end of the hold, where several exposed structural beams provided an area that would be sheltered if one of their large teammates did get thrown across the bay. While they were getting ready, there were muffled clangs from all over the ship as one bot after another finished stowing their things and found a place to lock down.

Their first jump was a suitably rocky one, to be expected from a workaday ship like the old ore hauler. But the miners were clearly used to it, unlatching from the ship as soon as the all-clear sounded. Elita called to someone she knew, "Roughneck, what's our ETA at Mars Base?"

"I'll find out, Prime."

*-T-F-Rising*

Mars Base had been built with both humans and bots in mind from the beginning. That meant as soon as the airlock cycled, the four humans were able to open their helmets. The atrium was packed with small-time prospectors in town to blow off steam after selling their loads. Elita explained, "Most miners are triple-changers, with a digger alt and an ore carrier form as well. They're capable of short independent jumps. Two or three miner-bots find a small asteroid, mine it out and move on to the next one. They leave the big rocks to outfits like the _Pride of Iacon _clan. This is probably a pretty rough neighborhood after the markets close. Do I have to _say_ the cheap energon joints are off limits?"

There was a round of laughter, but all she needed was to have to bail someone out of jail for getting overloaded and getting into a bar fight with a bunch of miners.

Mirage spotted some uniformed humans and pointed out the military area. They got assigned berths and quarters, then Elita dismissed them until the next morning.

Showers and wash racks were everyone's first destination. Elita didn't want to think where she had ore dust after that all-out fight in the cargo bay. For a moment she just shuttered her optics and enjoyed the steam jets.

She touched lightly on her sparkbond when the jets shut off and the hot air blowers came on. Since Optimus didn't seem busy she said, ::We're here. You were officially right about the humans.::

::What happened?::

::Goldstein shot me right between the optics while I was busy with Mirage and Wayfarer.::

::I'd have liked to have seen that.::

::We've got a long way to go, but it's coming together. It helps that half the team already know Kenoi and Langston from before. Everyone but Wayfarer and me already knows how to run interference for human teammates. I had them all pile on me today, but I think considering the tactics you ran up against the last time, I'll split the team down the middle next time. Goldstein and Masumoto need to get a better feel for how much room you and I need to move.::

::That _is_ an issue.::

::I found another issue today. I need to modify my alt to create a safe place for the humans to ride out a jump on something like an ore carrier that isn't set up for them. Life support for them would help, too.::

::I think all of us have used our passenger space for emergency shelter, but there has to be a better way under fire.::

::Nobody with passenger space could magna-lock in alt form, so we couldn't even do that.::

::I'll mention it to Wheeljack. He should be able to come up with something for you by the time you get back.::

::How are things back home?::

::Four NEST agents were killed when their chopper went down this morning,:: he told her sadly.

::Oh, no. Who was it?::

::Bellamy, Hsu, McLean and Irving.::

::Primus. Didn't McLean just come back from maternity leave?::

::Yes. She had a six-week-old son.::

::Who the Pit shot them down?::

::Nobody, the damn sparkless machine just malfunctioned and crashed into the sea.::

Elita was glad she was alone in the wash rack because she just sat down and cried at the unfairness of it. ::I am so sorry.::

::We all are, love. Accidents like this will never make sense.::

::There just aren't enough of us. They shouldn't _have_ to depend on those flimsy contraptions!::

::Nightstar asked me something that really made me think. She wanted to know why we can't all scan their transports as secondary alts. Most of us don't have the subsystems to control a flying alt ourselves, but they _have_ pilots. Starry lets Annie drive all the time, has ever since she got her first alt. We don't because we don't trust enough. But if even one of us had, those four people might still be alive.::

::This is all new, Optimus. We're all stumbling our way through the dark while we figure it out. Sometimes it takes a tragedy like this before we can even realize there's a problem. If this is something that at least some of us could do, it would help.::

::We both already have flight subsystems, so we can't really lead the way on this. It would take someone who could demonstrate that kind of trust.::

::Will and Ironhide could do it in a sparkbeat, but Will isn't a pilot,:: she said, frustrated.

::We'll figure something out. Not everyone's big enough to have a helicopter alt anyway.::

::True.::

::There's going to be a memorial vigil. I need to get down there.::

::I'm there in spirit, love.::

With a heavy spark, Elita went to inform Black Team of the crash. Everyone was gathering in the common room, so she didn't have to round them up. Kenoi and Langston had known the four soldiers the best. That put a damper on any plans to explore the base that evening. They decided to turn in and get an early start on training in the morning.

*"Here Dead We Lie" by A E Housman

_A/N: The first draft of this chapter was written just before the deadly helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011 took the lives of so many of our brave special forces soldiers. The news hit me like a physical blow, so soon after writing this. Out of respect for them, and the differing circumstances between the real life tragedy and the fictional incident, I nearly rewrote the chapter. I finally decided not to because it affects the ongoing plot, and because we dare never forget the true cost of our freedom. No disrespect is intended. I humbly dedicate this chapter to their memory. /A.N_


	46. Metamorphosis

(Chapter 34—Metamorphosis)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2020 – Mars, Diego Garcia)

After last night's early lights-out, a still serious and subdued Black Team met at the main air lock. Kenoi and the others ran a check on their life support filters. He said, "According to the locals, a filter lasts about four hours before the dust fouls it. Does everyone have plenty of spares?"

Everyone did. Kenoi said, "We're good to go, Boss."

They exited the airlock to see the _Pride of Iacon _lifting off for the asteroid belt. Elita sent to Captain Stonecutter on a private channel, ::Primus grant you a safe journey, my friend.::

::And keep ye in His hand as well, Prime.:: He chuckled. ::Our Elita, a Prime! Looking back over the vorns, there were a lot of clues I shoulda picked up on. Brightgold and I couldn't be more proud o' you if we'd raised ye ourselves.::

::Who's to say you didn't?:: Elita said. ::I was little more than a youngling when we first met.::

First, they made a run out to the science dome, where Elita gave First Aid a package from Ratchet. From there, they headed out into the badlands in two separate teams and spend several hours hunting each other through the canyons. That was working out pretty well, with neither side really getting an advantage. Kenoi and Langston split up for the exercise, Langston partnered with Goldstein and Kenoi started teaching Masumoto how to spot. It also gave Kenoi and Langston the chance to compete against each other, something they loved to do.

Langston and Goldstein went with Elita, along with Georgie and Shimmer. Kenoi took Mirage, Masumoto, Wayfarer and Bumblebee.

The second round, Kenoi's team quickly "killed" everyone but Langston and Elita. But then the two survivors split up and went hunting. Bumblebee and Masumoto both went down to Langston's rifle skills. Wayfarer took to the air, cloaked, and tracked Elita to her hiding place in a very rough canyon. She avenged her defeat from the day before with a brace of missiles. However, Elita's war-game computer scored her as wounded but still fighting. When Wayfarer heard her spinning up her ion cannon, she broke off for the moment, taking cover in the rocks.

::Mirage, I have Elita up a box canyon, she's scored as reduced movement but she's still got that fraggin' ion cannon. One hit from that and I'm out.::

::At least we know where she is so we can avoid her. Langston lost me, which means I could lead him right to you.::

She switched to radio. "Kenoi, are you on Langston?"

"Not exactly, but I think he's still in this area. If you two can score a kill on Prime or at least take her out of the fight, then we can all go after him."

"You realize you just classified him as more dangerous than Prime."

"I am if you're _right_ that she's hurt, up a box canyon. He's who knows where," Kenoi pointed out.

"Oh holy slag!" Wayfarer yelped as she launched herself, transforming and flying wildly to avoid getting blasted. "How the frag did you get out of that canyon?" She forced Elita to cover with another missile, but she only had three left. It was entirely possible that she could score three hits on a Prime and not stop her.

Mirage found himself really shaken by the situation. He had to remind himself that it was only an exercise. His sparkmate was in way over her head. But if he followed his screaming instinct to rip the head off anyone who threatened her, Elita would easily kill him. ::Keep her busy and don't get hit!::

He had to move deliberately to get into position behind her. But only an energon blade had any chance of penetrating her battle armor, and the practice blade he was using still made the same sound as the real thing. She activated her blade and shield and slashed at him. He barely managed to parry and disengaged, vaulting back several feet. The sheer force of the impact of her weapon against his had rattled him badly, but it did force her into the open. Without even thinking about it, they coordinated through their bond. Mirage attacked in passing, careful not to get into a situation where she could use her strength against him. As he had expected, she blocked with her shield. Wayfarer, though, scored another hit on the same leg she had "injured" before, this time nearly immobilizing Elita.

Elita somehow got to cover, switched to autocannons because she dared not waste energon on her other weapons. It didn't matter, because the seeker and the infiltrator left her there, trapped in place. Effectively, she was out of it.

Langston shot Mirage from a mile away, and the scoring computer's randomization function ruled Wayfarer out of the fight as well. That left the match as a sniper's duel. Since the two men could very well hunt each other for days, they decided not to play it out. Instead they met at a rock formation that everyone could see.

Everyone was satisfied with the way the team was coming together. Elita was especially pleased with Mirage and Wayfarer for their use of their bond.

They made sure no one had sustained any actual injuries without realizing, because as intensely competitive as they were, it was easy for that kind of thing to happen. The humans changed their life support filters and found the old ones almost completely clogged with red dust.

Elita had decided to stay out of the next round and send the bots to capture the "squishies". That was mostly because the Acolytes probably would attempt to capture them alive.

Before they could start the exercise, though, they picked up a mayday from a geology team whose GPS marked them about five miles away. The bots transformed, picked up their human teammates, and rolled out.

The geologists, two humans and a miner bot, were looking for water, collecting core samples for Oxford University. They had an inflatable shelter, which was likely to be useless in the coming storm. They said that two other human teammates had gone missing. The miner, Shale, was somebody Elita knew well.

The femme said,"Thank Primus yer here! I went out to their last location and they're nowhere around. They were in rocks so there aren't a lot of tracks. A sandstorm is due in a few breems!"

Elita said, "Secure your camp. It would be much safer for you two to ride it out in Shale's ore hold than this tent. How long since your last contact with the missing people?"

"About four hours now, ma'am," one of the scientists, Dr. Kessler, replied.

Shale gave Elita the location and Black Team headed out there as fast as they dared. Shale hadn't been able to pick up a trail, but Kenoi and Langston did right away. The two geologists had run away from the site, further up the hillside where they could hide in the rocks.

Shimmer asked, "What were they running from?"

"Quadruped minibot of some kind," Langston said.

Elita ordered, "Stow all your practice weapons and lock any energy weapons in live fire mode. We don't know what's going on here."

The rocks made the trail hard to follow. Kenoi, Langston and Goldstein spread out, staying on track until they followed the trail up a narrow crevasse.

They found the two scientists at the end of it, deeply unconscious and badly needing new filters in their life support systems.

The team reunited just before the sandstorm was upon them. They found the most sheltered place they could and waited it out in their alt forms. Elita's large form provided a windbreak for the others. Shimmer had grown proficient at making minor transformations to her alt form on the fly while helping Georgie, so she made room for the two scientists and Goldstein, their best medic. Everyone else quickly found somewhere to get. Wayfarer had to stay in robot form in order to magna-lock between Elita and Mirage. Her relatively lightweight seeker frame offered her no protection against being blown end over end by the tornado-force winds.

Goldstein changed out the filters on the two injured scientists' life support systems. Then she saw another problem. Their suits still depended on regular batteries, not energon fuel cells. They needed to be recharged. "Shimmer, I need some help with this. The batteries in their suits are almost out. Can you recharge them?"

Shimmer said, "There's a set of ports near your left hand. See if any of them match."

None of them did. Goldstein plugged both their suits into hers, then connected her suit to one of the ports. "If the strain doesn't kick a breaker on my suit, we'll be all right."

Shimmer laughed. "Bee is making dirty jokes about lesbian orgies."

Goldstein laughed and told Bee what he could do with himself.

Something big hit Elita and bounced off Shimmer. "What the-!" Goldstein exclaimed.

"I guess it was a rock," Shimmer said. "Prime, are you all right? That hit you first."

Elita's voice came over Shimmer's radio speakers. "I am fine. How are the geologists?"

"Their suit batteries have had it, but we jury-rigged something to recharge them. They're breathing easier now that the clogged filters have been changed out. Their vitals look good. They should be waking up any time now. Maybe then we'll find out what happened to them."

That wasn't to happen, though. The two scientists seemed to drift from unconsciousness into normal sleep, but Goldstein couldn't wake them. "Shimmer, can you scan them? There's only so much I can do with the suits in the way."

"I'll do what I can." Shimmer scanned them. "Slag! I'm detecting nanobots!"

Elita exclaimed, "What in the Pit?"

"I don't know, I don't know how to interpret this data."

Goldstein asked, "Am I infected?"

She was. None of the other humans were, and Shimmer's own nanobot colony appeared to be acting as an immune system, rapidly overwhelming and destroying any foreign nanobots that infected her before they could multiply.

"I think—it's turning you into Pretenders," was Shimmer's horrified conclusion.

Elita sent, ::Optimus, could you get Ratchet and Alicia? We have a situation here.::

*-T-F-Rising*

Shimmer sent Ratchet her scans, which he put up on a screen so that he could explain them to Optimus and Lennox. He said, "Shimmer guessed right. The nanobots are changing them to what we would recognize as Pretenders. They will apparently have a human alt that appears to be the same as their original human form. Most of their structures will be composed of a carbon-fiber compound rather than metal. There's nothing that can be done to stop the process, it has progressed too far for them to survive as hybrids. As for what their base form will be, I have no way of guessing."

Optimus hoped for the best, but that was all he could do. He told Elita what Ratchet had said. Elita said, ::We'll get them back to the science dome as soon as there's a break in the weather. Maybe then we can find out what happened to them.::

::Have Shimmer ask Goldstein how she is feeling.::

She relayed the request. Goldstein replied that there was no pain, she hadn't even known anything was wrong until she suspected she might have been infected when they found out the scientists were. "I feel very unsettled, it could be just anxiety but I think there's more. I have a sense of something...pressuring me? I'm afraid I don't have the vocabulary for it."

Shimmer asked, "Some_thing?_ Do you sense this as some sort of external force acting upon you?"

"Not physically. More that something is calling me. I am fighting a compulsion to answer, but I don't know how to do so even if I wished to," the Mossad agent replied.

When Shimmer reported that, Elita started to suspect the four-legged bot's involvement. ::I wonder if they haven't found a way to create some sort of clan bond somehow. It may be that she is capable of hearing before she can respond. Send Ratchet another scan and see if that might be the case.::

Shimmer said, ::That would imply that she has a spark now instead of a soul!::

Georgie said, ::Hello? Former human here?::

::Yes, but you went to the Well as a human and _then_ came back here as a bot,:: Shimmer replied. ::Just changing someone on the fly, that's a _bit_ different.::

Goldstein asked, "Are you bots speaking among yourselves? I can hear..._something."_

Shimmer replied, "Yes, we are. We're trying to figure out what's going on so that we can help. I just sent Ratchet another scan. I'm waiting for him to reply."

Ratchet reported that Goldstein's metamorphosis was progressing. Nearly all her systems were complete. But before Shimmer could finish receiving his transmission, Goldstein started to convulse. With her last effort, she threw herself as far from the unconscious scientists as she could to keep from flailing out at them.

Shimmer cursed and tried something she hadn't before, creating her stealth form inside her alt. It was very hard to leave most of her body an inert mass without changing the form of it to the cube she wanted to use. It would not have been able to move as a car with so many of her vital parts inside her stealth form. Ratchet would probably throw his wrench at her for trying such a thing on her own, but she couldn't see any other way to come to Goldstein's aid. She rolled the agent onto her side, as she had learned was the best thing to do for a convulsing human. But the Israeli's transformation was actually too far completed for that to make any difference.

She gasped. "Shimmer—it's trying to control me—if there's nothing you can do to stop it, then tie me up before I can hurt someone!"

"What do you mean 'it?'"

"I don't know!" she cried.

Elita cut through her defenses as though they didn't exist. ::Ruth! It is Elita. I know what this is. Accept me as your sister, and I will be able to help you fight it.::

Goldstein took the greatest leap of faith of her life and reached out to the Prime. She had no explanation for what happened then, only that she could sense a terrifying darkness that dwarfed her, yet she could sense her own spirit—her _spark—_burning with a brightness that astounded her. Elita showed her how to sever the bond between herself and that source of infinite darkness. No unwilling bond could compete with one freely accepted. Through Elita, she could sense Shimmer and the others. Shimmer held her close, comforting her new clan mate as well as she could.

She sensed the bonds to the rest of the clan—Elita's deep strong bond with Optimus, the same sort of thing between Mirage and Wayfarer, Shimmer's sibling bond with the Little Twins. Georgie was a calm solitary presence, understanding and consoling. Bee was a guardian, much like herself in that regard. There were others, there and avidly and collectively curious about who had just joined the club, but they were too far away for her to pick up anything else.

The sense of belonging with her new family helped sooth the horrible sense of unease, but something was still burning in her, gnawing at her control. "What's happening?" She asked, both aloud and over the clan channel.

Elita replied, ::The nanobots have contaminated you with dark energon. It acts...as a sort of mind-altering drug that makes it easier for Unicron to take control of you. Can you fight the effects of it until we can get you back to the Science Dome?::

::I'll have to. We aren't going anywhere for some time.::

::Shimmer, give her some energon. Diluting it can only help.::

::Yes, Prime.:: Shimmer said, ::Let me see your wrist, Ruth.::

Goldstein nearly lashed out at Shimmer with fingers turned to claw-like blades. She controlled herself with an effort.

Shimmer's human-sized hand pressed the panel there, triggering the reflex that caused Ruth to retract it. Shimmer said, "I wouldn't be surprised if there's some code you don't want that might to cause you to try to contaminate me. If that happens, I'm not going to let you backflush anything into my system. That might be a little unpleasant but it shouldn't hurt you."

Goldstein nodded. "Do whatever you need to do to protect yourself."

There was such a routine, but Goldstein found that unlike a non-intelligent computer infected by a virus, she had a will of her own and could fight it. Once the unwanted code activated, Elita was able to get rid of it, and trace it to others that had other triggers to go off later.

Elita was surprised that her new sister was able to control the very strong instinct to fight such an invasive procedure. She started to understand how Ironhide and Chromia had ended up bonded overnight. The sibling link was locking in on a level that made trust second nature. This would eventually have happened anyway, but she resented having it forced on them by circumstance, cheating them out of the slow development of a friendship. They knew everything about each other emotionally, without the context that made it all make sense. Sorting this out was going to be difficult for both of them.

Now that the foreign code was gone and the dark energon was diluted, Goldstein couldn't resist the need to go into recharge for much longer. Shimmer checked on the scientists. They were still out, and seemed likely to remain so for some time, but she kept a close eye on them all the same. They could wake up combative at any moment, though she was much less concerned about two geologists than a Krav Maga expert.

They had been back to the Science Dome for several hours before the two scientists started to come around. Elita had gone in while they were still recharging and cleaned up the viruses, and the dark energon had already been flushed from their systems.

The only thing left was the clan bond that had been forced on them. No one could offer a sibling bond because the two of them already had a sparkbond with each other. That, however was the strongest of bonds, so once they chose to join Elita's clan that was more than enough for them to sever an unwanted bond.

That left the two geologists free to explain what had happened to them. Teresa ran her hand through her hair, still quite a bit disoriented by all the data she was getting from unfamiliar new senses. "We were working at the site taking a core, when I heard a noise. There was a little bot about the size of a German Shepherd just standing there looking at us." Elita showed her how to project a hologram of it. It was a pretty standard-looking minibot, about Scramble's size but with none of that lovable goof's innocence. This thing had fangs and claws and the deep red-purple optics that she had come to associate with Pitspawn.

"At first I thought it had got lost from Mars Base, but then I saw those red optics and I knew we were in trouble. Pete and I were unarmed so all we could do was run. It cornered us in that arroyo. We had our rock hammers and we weren't going to go down without a fight. But instead of tearing us to shreds, it breathed some kind of smoke all over us. Then it just _left_, and a few minutes later I passed out." She held out her hand, watching in wonder as it transformed from human to robot and back. "Are we still contagious?"

Fixer said, "No. It takes a lot of energy to transfer a spark, and that's basically what they had to do to bring you online. The nanobots were programmed to sacrifice themselves to do that. We had to inoculate you with your own colonies of nanobots for self-repair purposes, but those are entirely different from the ones that changed you. They aren't contagious."

Goldstein asked, "What happens now?"

Fixer said reassuringly, "You're perfectly ordinary Pretenders, if you count that most of your frame is composed of carbon-fiber compounds transformed by the nanobots rather than metallics. You shouldn't notice a difference, if anything the carbon fiber is more durable. If you want you can walk out of here right now and go back to your lives. None of us will ever tell anyone. Your bodies are designed to convert food to a low-grade energon, though sunlight will be a much more efficient source of energy for you if you can't locate an energon source. I would advise you to find out more about what you are now, but you don't have to."

Pete and Teresa looked at each other. "You're kidding, right? This is awesome! Of course we want to know more! At the very least, it's going to make it so much easier for us to do our jobs."

"There's something else you need to understand. You two already have a sparkbond. Something had to already be there to begin with, for it to have formed so fast," Fixer told them.

"We've been together since third grade, we got married the day Terri turned eighteen. We always said we were soulmates. I guess this is proof it's the same thing," Pete said.

"It looks like it, but this will have much more of an impact on your day to day life. You'll see through each other's optics. You'll be able to communicate instantly. You're responsible for each other's lives as well as your own, because if one sparkmate offlines, most likely the other will also. Has your science progressed far enough to know what entangled pairs are?"

Pete nodded. "You'd have to ask a physicist, but we know what they are."

"It's a simplification, but you can think of your sparks as entangled. If something happens to one of you, it more or less happens to both of you. Distance does have an effect, but you'd have to be halfway across the galaxy from one another not to be able to feel each other's presence. On the other hand, once you learn to use it, you'll be able to act as one person."

Goldstein said, "I need to learn everything I can about my abilities now as well, to continue to be of use to my team."

The next morning, they went back out to hunt the Pitspawn bot that had attacked her. The iron in the soil made it very difficult for their sensors to detect anything that small, but they decided to try scanning for dark energon instead. Elita and Wayfarer had let their new younger sister come along, because they knew she needed to confront this thing to move on with her life.

She left her suit off, instead configuring her alt form to look like she was wearing one, so she wouldn't be confined by it if she needed to transform. Elita had her ride on the outside of her alt, one of the safest places for her since she didn't need the suit to breathe. Elita would keep her warm, and was massive enough to shield her from solar radiation to an extent. The ability to jump twenty feet from a standing start made it easy for Goldstein to get out of the way if Elita needed to transform.

Wayfarer's scanners started to pick up traces about ten miles from where they had found the scientists. She relayed the coordinates and the rest of the team caught up, working their way through the rough Martian landscape.

When they got close, the three scouts dismounted. Langston picked up the trail and they followed the bot up into the hills to a cave, where the Pitspawn had apparently taken refuge from the sandstorm. Elita ordered the three humans to stay well away from the opening. Wayfarer asked, "Prime, is there a reason why I shouldn't just fire a couple of missiles in there? Even if it tries to hide behind something, in that confined space the concussion should take care of it."

Elita said, "I want to see if there's evidence that there may be more than one of them."

Ruth said, "It doesn't look like there's room in there for anyone larger than me. With your permission, I'll get it out of there." Kenoi and the others couldn't back her up, not without also getting changed.

"Go ahead. Deactivate it, but try not to damage its processor or memory if you can do so safely."

"Yes, Prime." She activated her cloaking device and set a timer for it on her HUD. There was enough light in there that she could see. The enhanced hearing was nice as well. But other than that, she found herself using little other than the abilities she already had. Strength and speed in excess of what she was used to would be more hindrance than help until she got used to them.

The cave was one of many lava tubes found on Mars. This one was just tall enough for her to stand up without knocking her head. She made her way slowly, not wanting the sand blown in by the wind to crunch underfoot and give her away.

There was only one bot, and if there was any evidence to be found, it was in its memory banks, which Elita had asked her to try to recover undamaged. That meant a spark shot. She silently got her rifle out of her subspace hold and fired one shot. The bot dropped without a sound.

::OK, I've got it, but it's contagious. What do you want me to do with it now, Prime?:: She realized that she had used their sister-bond to speak without even thinking about it. ::Sorry if it was wrong—::

Elita wasn't sure. Nanobots could exist for a long while in a dormant state. She didn't know for sure how to sterilize the cave, or get the components out where she could examine them. ::No, no, that's fine. I don't know myself, but we can't risk spreading the nanobots. Stand by while I have Optimus ask Ratchet or Wheeljack.::

It was Que who told Optimus what they had to do, and he passed the instructions on to Elita, ::Burn them out with an energon fire. I agree that we need to get that thing's programming, but there's no way to sterilize the components without destroying them. Que suggests having Goldstein partition a drive and copy everything into that as is. Can she do that safely?::

Elita said, ::She can't but I can, if she can let me work through her so I can use my defenses to keep her from picking up a virus. If it were you or Wayfarer, there wouldn't be a problem, but ours is a new bond.::

::Either it works or it doesn't. Then drop the components and have her get out, and transform. That should allow her own colony of nanobots to destroy the Pitspawn ones. Then burn out the cave.::

::Understood.::

Goldstein listened to Elita's instructions. ::Let's try it, anyway. What do I have to do, Prime?::

::Nothing, just try not to fight me. It won't be any worse than what I did yesterday to get rid of the viruses. If you fight me, it won't be pleasant, for either of us. I'll back out as quickly as I can if you do, but still.::

Goldstein centered herself, Elita got a quick image of still waters through their bond. Then, surprising the scout Prime with how quickly she caught on, she dropped her defenses for just Elita. ::This is what I do, Prime, it's just another way of doing it.::

Both of them stopped for a few klicks, suddenly hit over the head with just how _little _difference there was between them after all. But they had a job to do.

Elita showed Goldstein how to link into the dead bot's processor and copy the files, actually she was only using Goldstein as a conduit and never copying more than one packet at a time to the Pretender's memory. That prevented her from being infected by anything that she was transmitting. Elita had the resources to keep the corrupted files safely contained, though she would definitely have Ratchet run a thorough scan after she finished this job, just to be sure.

Afterward, the rest of them backed off a safe distance while Goldstein sprayed energon all over everything in the cave, and opened all the dead bot's ports to add its load to the mix. She laid a trail to the cave entrance and transformed. When the other bots' scans confirmed that there were no more of them on her, she knelt and lit the energon trail by taking the expedient of striking her knife blade against her ped. Then she jumped out of the front of the cave before a fireball came blasting out.

They waited for the fire to die down before scanning the cave. The nanobots were gone, along with all but a few unrecognizable components of the dead bot.

Shimmer gave her an energon cube. She drank gratefully, having learned that using her reserves like that wasn't fun. Essentially, she had been bleeding out.

All in a scout's day's work.

*-T-F-Rising*

(one month later—Diego Garcia)

Goldstein threw her phone across the bay and dashed away tears, and suddenly exploded into violent motion, punching and slashing and kicking an empty shipping crate into oblivion. Will heard the racket and watched over her while she got the rage out of her system. When she dropped to her knees, sobbing into her hands, he went to her.

"Ruth?"

"Don't call me that anymore! Ruth Goldstein is dead!"

"What does _that_ mean?"

"My husband called me a monster and said he doesn't want me around my son anymore! He told my baby I died!"

"That son of a bitch can't do that! Can't you take him to court?"

She transformed, all sharp metal plates and brilliant blue optics. "Can I, Colonel? No court is going to take a firstborn son away from his father and turn him over to _this!_ Flareup already tried to see if anyone can do anything, I just got off the phone with her. He has another woman already."

"What's Mossad's take on it?"

"Good riddance to bad rubbish, too bad about your kid but that's just the way it is." She sighed. "Nathan is a lot of things, but he loves Davey. He's always been a good father. I'm not going to ruin my son's life with a custody fight that could drag out in the courts until he's of age."

Will thought about walking out of Annabelle's life if he thought it was the best thing for her. He didn't know if he had the courage. "Whatever you decide to do, I'm right here beside you, and I'm not the only one. You have a family now."

Goldstein nodded. "I'm...going to get cleaned up then I'll see who's in the common room. I really don't want to be alone right now."

"I'll walk you up there, I'm going to Admin anyhow." Will kicked the pieces of shattered crate over by a bunch of trash cans and got a can of pop while he waited for her to get out of the showers. Then he saw her up to the commons, where she was quickly surrounded by the rest of her team and cohort.

He got outside before he propelled a trash can across the lot with an almighty kick, swearing a blue streak.

Ironhide sidestepped the flying can. Will looking like he was about to kill somebody, and a bunch of upset femmes in the commons, didn't add up to anything good. "What the frag was that all about?"

"That no-good husband of Ruth's kicked her to the curb for some other woman and took her kid," he said. "This life is hell on marriage, but that's way over the line. There's not a damn thing we can do about it without getting the kid mixed up in a custody fight that Ruth would probably lose anyhow." At that point he could see huge advantages to the Cybertronians' clan structure. Even if someone's parents were feuding, it didn't have to screw up the sparklings' lives. A family had a larger relationship to the whole clan that supported all of them equally, even if things weren't going so well at home. A family that hit a rough patch or even broke up weren't left to deal with it on their own like humans often were. The whole thing was compounded when one of his soldiers got a dear john letter from halfway around the world, often they tried to soldier on and deal with it alone. He was glad he'd been there to see Ruth blow up over it, and got her some help.

He had too much work to do to let himself stay furious over something he couldn't change, and he was in such a lousy mood that people let him alone to get his work done.

*-T-F-Rising*

After that, enhanced detectors to catch Pretenders went up everywhere. Donna Moss-Lyman had been transformed, something that had to be kept quiet. She was captured by her husband and friends and a few Secret Service agents that they trusted implicitly. The Secret Service caught and terminated the bot that had infected her. Josh and Stormracer brought her to Diego Garcia to be freed from Unicron's influence.

That took about half a second. As soon as Optimus bonded with her and she saw what she had to do, she severed the link with Unicron so hard he figured the Devourer would have a headache for a week. That there was a good possibility the shock could have killed her hadn't given her an instant's pause, she was determined to live free or die. Elita helped rid her of the viruses, and then helped her set up the very strong set of scout-level defenses that any bot working in the White House would need.

Josh watched her eyes glow blue and held her close. She held on tight, then she whacked him and started crying in relief. "I was screaming for help and you didn't hear me! I just had to watch Unicron use me to betray everyone I love because I didn't know how to cut the bastard loose! I was afraid he'd make me hurt you or the baby!"

"I'm so sorry, honey. If we'd known we'd have done something sooner, you know that." He held her as tight as he could.

Donna pulled herself together after a few minutes. She didn't have time to indulge in freaking out. "We need to figure out how much damage I did."

"_It_ did. Not you." He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and gave it to her. It was a presidential grant of immunity. "We can debrief as soon as you're ready, but did you get into anything above your clearance level?"

She scanned her memory. "No, I think the system worked."

"Then there wasn't much harm done. We dodged a bullet. We can fix this."

Ratchet kicked Josh and Optimus out so he could examine Donna, but let Elita stay with her to keep her company.

Josh said, "My family owes you a life-debt and yes, I know what that means. _Thank_ _you_."

"Considering that she is my sister now, any question of a debt is moot. Besides that, I did very little. All I had to do was show Donna the way. You should have seen her break Unicron's hold over her. She is quite the warrior."

Josh nodded. He already knew that. "What does she need? What can I do?"

"Other people who have been through this have adapted well. All she really needs is your reassurance that she wasn't at fault for the security breach. She may also have doubts that you still want her in this form."

"She's my wife, I love her, full stop. I don't give a damn if she's a little green Martian." Josh declared. He didn't know it, but with her new Cybertronian senses, Donna easily heard him through the closed door and smiled to herself as Ratchet finished up her tests. For the first time she started to believe that everything really would be all right.

Prime was saying, "In the long run, you'll be safer to have her in the White House. No other Pretender would be able to get into place with her there. But if your government fails to appreciate the asset they have in her, remind them that she is my sister now. She, and by extension you and everyone else that she chooses to call family, will always be welcome here, under my protection."

Josh nodded. After some of the stunts that elements of the government had pulled on the Autobots over the years, they'd earned Prime's suspicion fair and square. "That _won't_ happen on this administration's watch, sir, but if the other party wins next year's election, we might very well have to take you up on that. They'd use her status to get back at me."

Optimus nodded understanding. "It could be used as an issue _in_ the election, for that matter." Now that she was his sister, that was officially his problem.

"Not if she's a US government agent, and she will be about ten minutes from now. Breaking her cover before the election would land someone in a federal prison," Josh said confidently. "They'd have to get into office before they could declassify her. And they won't even be able to get at us for classifying her in the first place—you said it yourself, with her around, we won't have a Pretender problem."

Optimus realized that anyone who tried that would be fighting the wily and politically powerful Chief of Staff on his home ground-not the wisest course of action. Team Seaborn would protect their own. He suddenly had no doubt that Donna would be safe, from their human enemies at least, and she would learn how to deal with the others. Together, those two could outnumber just about anything.

Fortunately, no other formerly-human Pretenders were found. If they were very lucky, only those two Acolyte bots had been brought here to spread the nanobots.

There was something else that they needed to consider. Ratchet and Wheeljack had quickly reverse-engineered the process that had converted their four new Pretenders. They now had the ability to offer the process safely to any human who wanted it. That was an immediate solution to all of Earth's over-population problems, because the only resources a Pretender really used was a patch of sunlight for their energon cube. It was also going to turn Earth cultures upside down.

The first thing he was intent upon was making sure no one else was _ever_ forced to undergo the process without their complete consent. The second was to be sure that all those who did want it had equal access. He realized that these weren't decisions that he could make without conferring with others much more expert in human considerations than he was.

For now, he had asked Ratchet and Que to keep the knowledge closely guarded within Med-Sci, only bringing Lennox in other than that. Lennox had asked for some time to think about it before he ventured an opinion, something Optimus completely understood. They all needed time to think before even considering dropping this kind of a bombshell.

Every day brought the threat of Unicron's invasion nearer to Earth. Anything that distracted them from preparing for that was a danger at this point.


	47. Darkness and Dawn

(Chapter —Darkness and Dawn)

(2020—Diego Garcia)

_A.N.: This one is very short, and carries a three-hanky warning. /A.N._

Georgie scattered a tiny box of ashes on a beach teeming with the little crabs Fleabag had loved to chase. He had lived to the ripe old age of 21, that was a long time for a cat. But she couldn't stop the coolant from flowing over her optics, blinding her to everything but that her dear old cat was gone. She fell to her knees and cried. She didn't know how long she had been there when she heard footsteps in the sand. It was almost dark. Sunstreaker knelt beside her and held her, reminding her that love never died and that she and her old friend would be reunited one day. After she stopped crying, they walked homeward slowly as the stars came out.

She came inside to find Fleabag's bed and dishes still there. By the time she put everything away, she was crying again. Sunstreaker asked, "Why don't you stay with me tonight? I just mean—I don't think you shouldn't be alone."

"OK."

They went to his berthroom in the apartment he shared with Sideswipe, and Flareup when she was home. Sunny got them some high-grade then held her. They talked, and she told him stories about Fleabag from back in Chicago. Sometimes they laughed, and sometimes he held her while she cried. After a while she fell into recharge.

It was strange to wake up in the same berth with someone else. She had been alone for a long time. But Sunstreaker looked different, lying there in the morning light. The haughty edge he showed most people was gone. He had curled up around her in his sleep, one arm across her.

She thought about all the mornings Fleabag had awakened her at first light with his hungry kitty dance, walking around on her and kneading until she got up and fed him. It was going to be hard to learn to sleep in after all those years with that crazy cat. She didn't want to get up because there was no way she could without waking Sunstreaker up. She opened an e-book that she had been reading and read a couple more chapters, then checked her e-mail and answered a couple of things.

Sunstreaker woke up when Sideswipe came in after his duty shift and pounded on the berthroom door, not knowing Georgie was in there.

Sunstreaker woke up reluctantly. "Shut it, Sides!"

The silver twin flung the door open, then saw Georgie. "Whoa! Sorry, I didn't know you had company!"

"Primus!" Sunny yelled, getting up. "What the Pit is your problem, Sides!"

Georgie waved and got up. There was no sense trying to tell Sideswipe it wasn't what it looked like, because that would just make him worse. Besides, she realized she wouldn't mind if it did turn into exactly what it looked like. She wondered if that was Fleabag's parting gift, opening her optics to possibilities. "You had your energon yet?"

He shook his head. "Just got in."

"Might as well come to the commons with us."

The three of them went out together.

_A.N.: You know the routine by now, wait a few days for me to write some more. /A.N._


	48. Hazy Shade of Winter Part 1

13

(Chapter 36—Hazy Shade of Winter Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

In the cold of a New York winter, Joe Gilmar sat in the stairwell of a derelict three-story brownstone watching an apartment across the street. For several months now, he had been investigating one of the contributors to the Cheyenne Black Hole, a Wall Street broker named Cynthia Bellamy, hoping that her contacts would lead to something. Finally, it apparently had. Cynthia had made several purchases of high-tech electronic components and hand-delivered them to the owner/operator of a tractor-trailer rig. It was this man, one Leroy Browning, that he was watching. Leroy was a former sergeant in the US Army, and he had spent time at Fort Hood during the time the Cheyenne Gang as they had started calling them had been recruiting there. Leroy made regular trips to Wyoming. Joe wanted to know what he was taking out there.

Leroy came out of his building and got into his car to drive to the lot where he kept his rig. Joe let him get down the block before he got into his car and followed. Once across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Staten Island, he stopped to fill up his tank and called Simmons to let him know what he was doing.

He went in to pay, and flirted a little with the lady behind the counter while he paid for his gas, and walked back to his car with a grin on his face.

*-T-F-Rising*

Simmons was working late in his office the next evening when the burner phone he was using to keep in touch with Joe rang. "Yeah, Joe, what's up?"

"Sir, this is Detective Keiran McKenzie of the New York Police Department. This number was the last called from a phone we found on a body we pulled out of the harbor."

"Fuck, no!" Simmons yelled in shock. Then he said, "There's got to be a mistake. What does the guy look like?"

"White male, 6'1", 170 pounds, New Jersey driver's license identifies him as Joe Gilmar."

"I'll be on the next flight out," Simmons replied.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Simmons thanked the detective and got off the phone. "Not as sorry as some motherfucker is gonna be," he vowed. He went over to Mearing's office.

Charlotte put down her data pad as soon as she saw the look on his face. "Seymour, what happened?"

"NYPD just fished Joe out of New York Harbor."

She raced around her desk to hold him while he mourned a friend closer than a brother. "What happened?"

"That's all I know—other than his last call was to me, that's how the cops contacted me. I need to get to New York."

"Seymour, you're too close to it."

"I know that. But I'm going to finish what Joe started."

"Not by yourself, you're not."

"I want you here as control on this one. I need you here, Charlotte."

She nodded. "Then take Mask and Mirror with you."

Simmons wasn't surprised that he got Optimus Prime's full support. He understood that in their society, the list of people who had the right to avenge a murdered warrior was pretty short, and a brother-by-choice was at the top of that list. Simmons didn't need to explain anything. An hour later, Corona took off for New York with Simmons and the Pretender Sisters aboard.

Mearing started pulling strings with her contacts at State and DoD. By the time Corona set down at their hangar at La Guardia, the ambassador had all the authorizations her husband needed waiting for him in her office there. So was the lead FBI agent on the Cheyenne Black Hole case.

"Hello, Mr. Simmons. Sorry we had to meet again under these circumstances."

"Special Agent Abrams. What's NYPD got?"

"I talked to the lead detective on the case, McKenzie. The ME still has the body, but I've seen a preliminary report and it isn't good. It looks like Gilmar was tortured, then shot at a distance with a nine millimeter round, and fell several feet into the water."

"So he escaped, but didn't get far."

"That's what it looks like."

"Has anyone informed his daughter?"

Abrams replied, "McKenzie needs to question her, but I asked him as a courtesy to let you notify her first."

"Is this some kind of a task force or what?"

"Can be. I'd suggest so."

"Let's go talk to the locals then." The two men went out to Abrams' car and headed downtown.

McKenzie introduced his partner, a former Marine named Linda Florez y Santiago. Simmons shook her hand. "Good to meet you, Detective Florez."

"Mr. Simmons."

"Detective McKenzie."

"Sir. We can use the conference room. Would you like some coffee?"

"That'd be great. These are my associates, Masque and Mirror." The sisters nodded as they were introduced.

Florez did a double-take when she saw their eyes. "Are the two of you—"

Masque glanced at Simmons, and at his nod, she gave a little wave, transforming her hand as she did so.

Florez nodded. "I tried to get into NEST a few years back, but I got washed out by a training accident that blew out my knee," she explained. "Small world." They got situated in the conference room.

Mirror scanned the room for bugs. "It's clean, sir."

McKenzie was the younger of the two detectives. His bearing indicated a military background as well, but you could get that look in the NYPD just as easily. He asked the sisters, "Can I get you ladies anything?"

Masque smiled, "We're fine, thanks."

Simmons asked, "Is anyone else coming?"

Abrams replied, "I'm assuming you're copying this to Corona at the airport?"

"I am," Mirror confirmed. She created hologram of Corona, in base form and in her Lear Jet alt. "She wants to know if she should have Brakedown hop a transport and join her there."

"Depends on whether he's busy at the Moon Base. We might need him and we might not, but I wouldn't mind having him on call," Simmons replied.

After a moment, she said, "His ETA is four hours."

Abrams said, "The rest of my team was following up a lead in Vermont when we found out about this. I haven't pulled them off it yet because for all we know it's another angle of the same case. You want to start or do you want me to?"

"I will, since we were the first ones involved. I guess we're not doing this as independent investigations anymore?"

"Not with a man down we're not. Not as far as I'm concerned."

"What the hell did we just walk into?" Florez asked. "Should we bring our LT into the room?"

"Probably. We'd might as well just do this once," Abrams said.

"Yeah, we had. Mirror, can you put up holoscreens for Ambassador Mearing and Corona?"

She did so. When Lieutenant Erin Brannon arrived, they went around the room and introduced themselves.

Simmons explained about the kidnapping and the Cheyenne Black Hole. "Joe Gilmar was a former partner of mine who left government service back in 2005 and became a private investigator. He was working this case independent of the FBI, there was cooperation at a higher level whenever solid evidence turned up. We turned over evidence to the Brazilian and US governments that has so far led to the arrest of three key players in this.

Joe's part in it was investigating the associates of a fourth contributor, a stockbroker named Cynthia Bellamy. Until recently, we had no evidence linking Bellamy to any illegal activity. But Joe found out she bought electronic components and delivered them to a truck driver named Leroy Browning. Joe's last phone call was to me, he reported that he was following Browning hoping that he could find out where he was taking the components."

Florez said, "We've been to Gilmar's apartment. Someone got there before we did and tossed it. CSI is there now. I hope when they get done, you'll be able to give us an idea what they might have taken. He worked out of his home office, is that correct?"

"Yeah, anybody he didn't want in his place he met at a coffee shop down the block or at their place," Simmons replied.

"We need to question his daughter to rule her out, but Special Agent Abrams asked us to let you make the notification."

"That'll be my next stop. Have you got anything back from CSI yet?"

Lt. Brannon slid a file jacket across the table, but kept her hand on top of it. "Sir, I'd ask you to reconsider if this is really how you want to remember an old friend."

Simmons nodded respectfully. "There's nothing in that jacket that can change how I remember Joe, Lieutenant. The only way I know to honor his memory is by finishing this job and getting the bastards who did his to him."

She took her hand away.

Simmons had braced himself for the sight of Joe cold and pale on a morgue slab, but the pictures still were not easy to look at. He was covered from the waist up with the characteristic burn-bruises left by jumper cables, and what looked like cigarette burns. His wrists and ankles were heavily abraded with rope marks.

Joe hadn't run honestly expecting to outrun a bullet, or much of anything else. He knew he wasn't much of a runner. And he'd taken the time to grab his cell phone on his way out. He'd had to know they would shoot to tie up loose ends. This way Joe kept his silence and prevented them from destroying evidence.

Simmons said, "We'll go talk to Amy and bring her back here."

"I'll put out a BOLO on Browning."

Florez said, "What about Bellamy? What could these electronic components be used for?"

"We can't point at any one thing," Mirror said. "Pit, I _have_ most of those components. But so does something like a Stealth bomber or a battleship."

"Anything that doesn't blow things up?" McKenzie asked.

"Well, yes, there are industrial applications involving sophisticated control systems. But the military applications are generally for computerized targeting and fire control, that kind of thing. And why would someone building an assembly line or something need to sneak around to get the components?"

Brannon suggested, "We could scare the hell out of her and let her think she's part of a terrorism investigation. Accuse her of selling this stuff to a bomb maker. Then see who she contacts."

Simmons nodded. "Good idea. If you need one of us to come in and play man-in-black, it would be better if it was Abrams. There's a possibility she could recognize me on sight, if she's more involved in this than we think she is."

Mearing said, "They could be sourcing those components from more than one place. I'll get someone on that."

Simmons and the twins walked down to the parking lot. Masque went for their SUV. Mirror asked, "Are you OK, sir?"

"Ask me when it's over."

She answered with an understanding nod.

Masque pulled the SUV up to the curb and they got in, Mirror rode shotgun and Simmons got in the back.

They had a long ride to Joe's daughter's place in Brooklyn. Amy DiTraglia was a nurse in a pediatrician's office, the divorced mother of Joe's two granddaughters. It was six in the evening by the time they reached the apartment building.

Simmons knocked at the door. Inside, he could hear a television playing.

Amy's ten-year-old, Jenny, checked the door and yelled, "Mom, it's Uncle Seymour!"

She rattled the chain and turned the locks. Amy and the other daughter, eighteen-year-old Selena, came out of the kitchen. Selena was getting ready to leave for boot camp in a little while. She already had her hair buzzed. "Hey, Uncle Seymour."

She and Amy realized something was wrong as Simmons and his partners stepped into the living room. Amy said, "Dear God. Dad."

Jenny asked, "What happened?"

"I'm so sorry. The police found Joe this morning."

"That can't be. I just talked to him yesterday. He was fine. He can't be dead."

Selena held her mother. "What happened?"

"Somebody shot him." That was enough for little Jenny to be getting on with.

"Who?" Amy demanded.

"I don't know yet. But I swear to God I'm going to find out. The police need to talk to you, if Joe mentioned _anything—."_

Amy got in her purse and gave her car keys to Selena, in case she would need them before they got back.

Selena got her mother's coat. "We'll be fine, Mom. Do what you need to do."

Amy kissed her cheek, then hugged and kissed Jenny. It was a silent drive back to the police station.

Simmons brought Amy over to McKenzie and Florez and introduced the two detectives. "They caught Joe's case."

Amy nodded. "I'll help in any way I can, but I don't know what I can do. Dad never talked about his work. I never knew what cases he was working on."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"He came over to watch the game with us last Sunday afternoon," she said. At least the last time they had seen him, he had a great time with the girls. "I talked to him on the phone a couple of times since then."

"Did he mention any suspicious people, anything strange or out of place happening?"

"No, but he wouldn't have. He was worried about my older daughter joining the Marines, he wanted her to do something safe with her life. That's mostly what we talked about, he was giving her the facts about what to expect in boot camp and all that."

"What about the phone calls?"

"The one Monday was just to thank me for dinner, and family stuff. Yesterday he said he had to be out of town on business, and for me not to worry if he didn't call. It didn't sound like he thought it was going to be anything out of the ordinary."

"Where did he call from?"

"His apartment, I think. I could hear the news on TV."

They didn't have too many questions for Amy. Nobody really ever got ruled out as a suspect in a murder investigation, of course, but she was free to go. All they told her was that Joe had been shot and found in the harbor.

Simmons took her home. He debated going to his mother's, but it was late and he didn't feel up to facing all her questions that night. When it was all over, then he'd go.

*-T-F-Rising*

The next morning, after spending a night in jail with the hookers and drunks, and talking to her lawyer, Cynthia Bellamy was more inclined to cooperate. The lawyer was a tall, thin serious woman named Leah Rubenstein who had almost twenty years experience winning cases for people who got caught up in Patriot Act cases, and that was what this looked like to both attorney and client. That was what it _would_ be if it went to court.

Rubenstein asked, "Exactly what are you accusing my client of having done?"

"To put it in simple terms, Ms. Bellamy purchased various electronic components capable of being used in attacks against Americans, and delivered them to a suspected terrorist."

"What terrorist?"

"Leroy Browning."

"I don't know anybody by that name."

McKenzie put a Leroy's service photo on the table in front of her. "You're trying to tell me you don't know this man?"

She picked up the photo, squinted at it, then put her hand over his Army buzz cut. "Well, this looks sort of like a client of mine, and I did get the stuff from the electronics store for him. We're going into business together. But his name isn't Leroy Browning and he isn't any terrorist. You must have the two of them mixed up because they look a lot alike. My client's name is Duane Darnell."

"What kind of business?"

"Manufacturing. He's invented something that can increase engine efficiency by twenty percent. Now I don't know how it works and I wouldn't tell you if I did, but he proved it to me by putting one of them on my car. While it was on there it saved me a fortune. Now did you ever think that a good way to really screw up a business rival would be by getting Homeland Security to harass them over some phony terrorism charge?"

"And this stuff was, for what, to build more of these things?" McKenzie's voice kept a skeptical tone.

"Not exactly, they're used to build controls for assembly lines. Duane doesn't want the oil companies to find out what he's doing before he's ready to start selling his product. You know how they are. I'm not stupid, I checked and that is what they're used for."

Florez said, "I don't know, Mac, this could be a case of mistaken identity and if that's all it is, we can clear this up in no time. All we'll have to do is talk to this Duane and get him to show us some ID."

"Ma'am, if you'd just told us this last night, you coulda saved us all a lotta trouble."

"What, you threw me in jail and started screaming about terrorists and the Patriot Act! I wasn't about to say anything without a lawyer here!"

Florez said, "Just calm down and give us a number where we can reach Mr. Darnell. I'm sure we'll have this all cleared up in no time."

"They took my phone. It has all my numbers on it."

Mac held up his hand in a pacifying gesture. "I'll have someone get it back for you. It won't take long. Can I get you some coffee, maybe a muffin, while we're waiting?"

"No, I don't want anything."

Florez went out to get the phone. The others had already been busy collecting information on Darnell. Simmons said, "It looks like she might have been scammed. The easiest way to do it would be to put a few gallons of gas in her car every now and then. We've got a paper trail on the Darnell identity going back three years. They've funneled several million into Darnell's stock portfolio. Have we got everything copied off this cell phone?"

Masque said, "Give it here, I'll make a copy I can work with."

A few seconds later she handed it back and started tracing numbers. "Sir, the number for this Duane is also a cell. It is now in the Pittsburg area headed west."

Mac said, "Road trip!"

"Get everyone ready to move out. Find out if Brakedown made it in. They won't know him on sight," Simmons said.

Mac asked, "What do you want me to do about Bellamy?"

"LT, can we hold her?" Simmons asked.

"Just until her lawyer gets a judge."

"If she hits the streets unguarded, they might kill her. Can you put her in protective custody?"

"Only if she consents."

Simmons thought about it. "Tell her that we think there's a disagreement between two terrorist groups. We think the other guys made the same mistaken identity we did, they're after Duane because they think he's Leroy, and they might be after her too if her number is on Duane's phone. We can't tell her anything else because she doesn't have clearance. Then park her someplace for a few days while we get Leroy."

"That may be how you do things in whatever agency you came from, but those kind of shenanigans could get the department sued."

Abrams said, "LT, he's not kidding, her life is in danger. These people have been involved in a kidnapping and one murder that we know of, the people involved in the conspiracy have been involved in various other violent crimes including human trafficking, drug smuggling and murder not involved with the conspiracy itself, and they are a paramilitary group. She's a potential witness against them. We haven't got authorization to throw the book completely out the window, but if you can keep the lady alive, we've got your back."

"You'd better be right about that, Special Agent. I'm depending on my pension, and I'll be royally pissed if I lose it thanks to you two."

"Understood," Simmons replied.

Abrams said, "I'll get a federal judge to issue us a warrant on Leroy."

Simmons said, "Wheels up in four hours. We'll meet at Hanger 211 at LaGuardia. I'm going to drop by Joe's place and see if CSI is done there yet, I'd like to have a look around."

"LT, I need to make arrangements for my little girl," Florez said.

Mac also had some things to take care of before they left town. They all went in different directions, to meet at the hangar later.

Simmons found the apartment taped off but empty. He had a key, it took him a minute to find it then he opened the door and ducked under the police tape.

When Abrams had said the apartment had been tossed, he hadn't said it looked like a war zone. The mattress and chair cushions were all cut up, all the drawers had been pulled out and dumped, the tv had been smashed to make sure nothing had been hidden inside the case. Even the medicine cabinet had been pulled off the bathroom wall.

Joe's laptop computer was missing from his office. It would take days and somebody who knew what had been there in the first place to figure out if any paperwork had been taken. Simmons used a pen to poke through the pile of stuff where the desk drawers had been dumped. A set of keys was missing.

"Let's go. Joe had a storage locker, they got the keys."

"Unless CSI took them?" Mirror asked.

"That's possible. If they did, we'll meet them there." He locked the door behind him.

Climbing in and out of the back of the SUV was really starting to be a nuisance. He poked his fingers under his brace and tried to adjust it to a better position, then gave it up for an exercise in futility and fastened his seatbelt. He gave Masque directions.

The self-storage place was big, but pretty quiet today. There were units in a former warehouse and more outside. Joe had one of the indoor ones, because what he mostly kept there were old case records and things that needed protection from the weather. Simmons slipped the guard a twenty dollar bill and mentioned Joe's name to get in.

The guard said, "Yeah, your friend with the key is already back there.

They parked out of sight of the guard booth and walked back. Masque and Mirror disappeared to wavering silhouettes.

Simmons peered around a large brown dumpster. There was a guy guarding the door, and probably another one inside. Simmons motioned the sisters forward. It was frustrating as hell not to even be able to cover them, but there was nothing he could do until they came visible.

Not that they needed his help. One minute the guy was standing there, keeping a lazy guard over the empty alley between two rows of lockers. The next, one of the sisters came visible behind him–Mirror–and clapped her hand over his mouth, and dragged him around the corner. Simmons moved up. Masque was waiting this side of the door. He drew his M9 and waited for Mirror.

They burst in, guns out. A dishwater blonde woman was going through a box of papers. Masque grabbed her as she tried to get a gun out of the waistband of her jeans. Mirror took the weapon and searched her. All she found was a set of car keys, a spare clip and some cash, no ID of any kind. Mirror said, "That's all the other one had, too, except for a knife."

Simmons checked the box of files they had been looking through. It was the most recent one. "Joe didn't tell you shit, you came up empty at his apartment, and now, guess what?" He stuck the automatic under her jaw. "Three strikes and you're out."

Mirror said, _"Don't–!"_

"Why the fuck not? It's better than they gave Joe."

The prisoner shut her eyes. "Go ahead. At least you're human."

Masque transformed and trailed sharp claws lightly across the woman's cheek. "Not me, sweetspark."

Her eyes flew open and she stared at the Pretender. Masque tapped the end of her nose just hard enough for a tiny bead of blood to well up. Then in a flash she was a woman in a black jacket again.

Simmons said, "Well, there you have it. Tell me who you're working for and I'll shoot you. Otherwise, I'll let my friend here have you."

"The only one we know is a guy named Leroy Browning. He's the only one who had contact with anyone outside our cell."

"How many in this cell?"

"Just me and Mitchell, and this other guy that I only knew as Jeff. The PI killed him when he escaped."

"Where's the body?"

"In a dumpster in some alley, I don't know where exactly! It was dark and I wasn't driving."

"Who shot Joe?"

"Browning."

He reached in his pocket for his cell phone and called Lt. Brannon.

"But you said–"

"You want I should shoot you? Tough. That isn't how we do business."

"But when they find out I talked–"

"Just because I won't kill you myself, doesn't mean I give a damn what your own people do. I hope you last at least as long as my partner did."

A couple of squad cars showed up to get them.

When they got to the airport, Brakedown was there with Corona, Abrams and the detectives. Florez had some sandwiches and coffee, which Corona asked them politely to eat in the hangar. She wasn't too upset about coffee but she didn't want crumbs. Mac asked, "Anything else we need to know?"

"Just to stay in your seat if anything happens, that way I know exactly where you are." Corona transformed.

Brakedown asked, "Is he still headed for Cleveland?"

Simmons heard Mearing's affirmative over his headset.

"I'll head out then. We should catch up pretty quick, considering he'll have to stop for food and gas." He transformed, put up his holoform, and pulled out of the hangar.

Corona also transformed and her passengers climbed aboard. A few moments later they were on their way.

New York's restricted flight zones kept them from staying with Brakedown until they were in New Jersey. From there, they settled in for a long flight.

They caught up with Browning's truck that afternoon on I-70 headed for Indiana. Brakedown stayed a few cars back, while Corona kept far enough away that he wouldn't notice her. She stopped a couple times in abandoned fields and once, after dark, behind a strip mall, so the humans could get out and buy provisions or whatever they had to do, all the while in constant contact with her bonded.

Browning was clearly going to push on through the night. ::How are you on energon?::

Brakedown checked his HUD. ::I could use some.::

She checked the map. ::There's a rest area up here. We'll find a place to hide some for you in there, then we'll take over surveillance while you get out of alt form for a while.::

::If there aren't a hundred humans in there.::

::We'll find someplace. It's two o'clock in the morning, in the middle of nowhere.:: Aloud, she said, "Look for a rest stop right up here close. We need to cache a couple energon cubes for Brakedown."

The rest stop was deserted. Corona landed in the lot and Masque and Mirror hid the cubes in a big stone planter. ::Right as you pull in there's a big planter full of those fuzzy red things, the twins put the cubes under the fuzzy things.::

::Got it, look for the fuzzy red things,:: he laughed. ::He'll be there in ten.::

Corona made sure everyone was back in their seats then gained altitude and waited for the truck to come by.

Masque and Mirror helped themselves to some energon then went into recharge. Florez said, "They've got the right idea. We should get some sleep too. Corona, would it help if we stood watches and helped you keep an eye on that truck?"

"Just until Brakedown gets back."

Florez went up to the cockpit. Once she was settled, Corona turned out all the lights so the others could sleep. "Masque said you volunteered for NEST but hurt your knee?"

"Yeah, it was a freak thing, I was learning how to use a squirrel suit and my chute didn't open right. I managed to bleed off enough velocity that the landing didn't kill me, but it sure messed my leg up. After I got out of the Marines, I took the civil service test to join the NYPD, and here I am. Is that Browning?"

"Yes, that's him," Corona replied.

This was just like every other stakeout that Florez had ever been on. Until something happened, it was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Military discipline came in handy. So did having a partner to gossip with. They chatted about their kids, Florez' three-year-old Anita and the three mechs that Corona and Brakedown had raised.

Corona said, "I know that human relationships can be complicated, but you haven't mentioned a mate."

"That's because I don't have one. Anita's dad and I weren't mates. This was just after I left the Corps. I'd been in rehab for a long time trying to get fit for duty again, but it just wasn't going to happen. I went out drinking one night and apparently went home with some guy. The next morning he put me in a cab. A few weeks after that, I was late and guess what? OK, you can laugh now."

"I'm not laughing. It must have taken a lot of courage to make room in your life for a sparkling–a baby, I mean–at a time like that."

"I'm a Catholic. I may not be a very good one, but there was no question I'd make room. My sister helps. Consuelo has a bunch of kids of her own, so she doesn't mind watching one more. It works for us. Can't have been any easier raising your boys–mechlings–in a _war zone_ for Chrissake."

"It was anything but easy. We were neutrals who were conscripted by the Decepticons. It wasn't what any of us wanted, but it was go along or die, believe me. The 'Cons didn't like family bonds, your only loyalty was supposed to be to Megatron. They'd allow sparkmates and siblings, because one's always a hostage for the other. But parental bonds weren't allowed. You'll do anything for your kids, even take on a dark lord. Megatron wouldn't have it. So we had to keep it quiet."

"Until I joined the Corps, I'd had it easy. Oh, yeah, we were poor growing up, but we didn't go hungry more than a couple times a week and we had shelter and clothes to wear. It wasn't till I joined the Corps that I saw some other places and I figured out what _real_ poverty is. I'm old enough to remember 9/11, but that was the closest I'd been to a war zone. I've seen enough to know now, though, that I can barely imagine what you must have been through, just trying to keep your family alive through all that."

"Primus grant we never go through anything like that again," Corona said.

Florez had known refugees before, and she knew the horrors that they had seen never really left them. It got better in time, but there was always the fear of the same thing happening again.

Another set of headlights appeared behind Browning, and Corona increased her distance once Brakedown confirmed that he had their target in sight. "That's Brakedown. You should rest."

"Yeah, tomorrow's going to be a long one." Florez went back to her seat and closed her eyes. She fell asleep thinking of her little girl.

(Continued in Part 2)


	49. Hazy Shade of Winter Part 2

(Chapter 36—Hazy Shade of Winter Part 2)

By the next morning, they were two states over and Browning hadn't stopped longer than an hour at a time. He had to be using amphetamines to stay alert this long. He crossed Iowa and headed into Nebraska, clearly headed for Wyoming. An excitement started to build that he might be leading them straight to the jackpot. Still east of Cheyenne, he headed north along back country roads that forced Brakedown to increase the distance between them to avoid notice.

Slowing down saved him getting caught by an energon detector, Corona saw it before they set it off. But that was where they lost Browning.

They doubled back and regrouped at somebody's presently-unused hunting cabin. They got out, Corona transformed and got the humans' things out of her subspace for them. Everyone changed into hiking boots, and put on bullet-proof vests and cold weather gear.

Simmons paced as he conferred with Mearing and Elita. Elita's advice was that Masque and Mirror would practically have to walk right up to an energon detector to set it off. It was possible to put up detectors sensitive enough to catch Pretenders indoors_, _where their faint energon signature was concentrated, but not outside. The two large bots would have to wait outside the detectors, but the twins should be fine.

The sisters were wearing warm coats just like their human companions, cold was just as disabling to bots as to humans. They had to pack extra rations because as relatively small as they were they would have to burn a lot of extra energon to keep the cold from putting them in stasis lock. Anything that insulated them would increase their efficiency.

The terrain was a high desert plateau. This area bordered on a wildlife preserve containing several reservoirs, but here, private land bordered the road on both sides. It wasn't sand dunes as far as the eye could see. There were plants like sagebrush every so often. The cabin backed up against a low hill. In the corner between the cabin and the rock face, Corona and Brakedown settled down to wait.

Abrams and Masque took point, then Simmons and Florez. Mirror and Mac brought up the rear. The three ground-pounder veterans slipped easily back into patrol mentality, keeping the chatter to a minimum and paying attention to their surroundings. Mac was former Navy, he had spent a lot more time swabbing decks than going hiking in the great outdoors. His police experience was more useful to him at the moment. Masque and Mirror were concentrating more on senses that their teammates didn't have.

Mirror said, "Control just transmitted the latest satellite data." They gathered around while she projected a hologram of the photos. She flashed a small dot at their location, and another at the cabin.

Simmons said, "OK, show me where the borders of that game preserve are." She did. "They're not in there, too much chance of a park ranger seeing something he wasn't supposed to."

"Same thing's true of popular hunting areas," Abrams said. "They wouldn't want to be doing anything illegal where a lot of people tramp around with guns, dogs and cell phones."

Mirror blanked out the park, then after some research, a couple of other areas. The result was a wide corridor along the highway. It was still a lot area to search. She placed another mark near the road. "I wonder if they placed the energon detectors in a circle around whatever they're hiding?"

Abrams said, "Maybe not a perfect circle, but if we find more and overlap their effective radius, we should start seeing a pattern."

Simmons said, "We should start seeing a _truck, _or something big enough to hide one. There's nothing here bigger than a cottonwood tree, for crying out loud, where did they go with it?"

Mirror examined the image again. "It isn't here. There are a few ranches with a big enough barn to hide a semi. That's almost where he'd _have_ to go."

"OK, let's make for the closest one first." He asked Mearing to monitor the ranches for any sign of Browning's truck, and also to look for anywhere else that he could have hidden it.

Simmons stood. A sharp pain flared up his leg, the screws holding the bone together conducted cold. That was another reason to like Diego Garcia. He checked his brace and tightened a strap that was working its way loose. They were only a couple miles from the first ranch, if they cut across country.

They had time to check three ranches before they ran out of daylight. There was a discussion then about whether to push on or stop and rest. Finally they decided to split the difference and rest a few hours, then move out and check out the next place or two very early in the morning, when most people would be in bed.

It was a cold, clear night. Some brush that sort of served as a windbreak was all the shelter they could find, and they didn't dare have a campfire. They did have a self-warming thermos to make coffee.

None of them were country folks. An hour after everyone but Mirror, who was on watch, had bedded down for the night, something started howling. Nobody knew if it was wolves or coyotes or a pack of stray dogs, but they were loud. Abrams cursed, having just about got to sleep in spite of being half frozen.

Simmons muttered, "Home, home on the fraggin' range!"

Mearing laughed over his headset.

By the next evening they had checked out every single building that was big enough to hold a semi truck, and come up with squat. They found another energon detector. Corona carefully flew around to find the rest of them and mapped a rough circle.

Florez had blisters, it had been a long time since she had walked a beat and the support she wore in her shoe to keep her knee aligned rubbed. She peeled off her sock and sprayed instant bandage over the torn blister, then sat there in the freezing cold with her boot and sock off waiting for it to set up. "So where the fuckin' hell are these skells!"

Abrams said, "Let's see the map again. Mirror, can you overlay the satellite photos and highlight anything that's different?"

"Yes, just a second. This graphics stuff is a memory hog," the Pretender complained.

Abrams laughed. "Be glad you can do it in the field. Pam, my intel tech, has computers and stuff in the van."

"Yes, do you know where Pam is? In the van, where it's warm, not freezing her aft off out in the great outdoors!"

"You can say that again," Mac groused.

Mirror said, "Wait a minute, I might have something here." She enlarged an area near the center of the area enclosed by the energon detectors. Not too far from the road, the changing angle of the sunlight revealed a square in the desert that was big enough for the truck.

Mac asked, "Is that a building of some kind?"

"No, I don't think so," Simmons replied, with his greater knowledge of analyzing aerial photographs. "There's not enough relief for that. It's almost flush to the ground."

Masque said, "It could be something cloaked. Sometimes a cloaked building will show a footprint something like that if there isn't a hologram over it to make it blend in."

"I hope no one's reverse-engineered cloaking technology."

The Pretender replied, "The 'Cons had absolutely no concern for the remains of their dead. All it would have taken was for one of their scouts to have been recovered by some government or a corporation."

"We've accounted for all of Soundwave's crowd that we knew about, but we didn't know about you two for a while."

"It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he had other operatives known only to himself and Megatron," Masque said.

"Who could still be out there somewhere," Florez said.

"It's possible. A scout trapped behind enemy lines will go to ground, blend in as seamlessly as possible, and wait it out, like Masque and I were doing. With all the energon detectors around these days it wouldn't be easy, but it _is _possible."

Masque said, "I got overconfident and careless. I used some code that someone in the know recognized as Cybertronian, and they traced it back to us. That was an amateurish mistake that an experienced scout wouldn't have made."

They started hiking, snacking on energy bars as they walked. When they got within a mile of the anomaly, Masque and Mirror went ahead to recon.

There were more energon detectors here. They found a concrete square almost flush with the ground. There was a narrow rim around it like a curb.

::It looks like a helipad, only bigger.::

::I think it's a lift.::

The semi's tire tracks were clearly visible out onto the lift. Then Masque spotted something else. A Cybertronian footprint.

Mirror immediately compressed the file containing her memory of everything they had seen, then encrypted the compressed file, and transmitted it straight back to Ops in a short burst. If they got caught, at least they had reported that much.

Masque walked slowly around the edge of the lift, looking for the electromagnetic fields that would give away buried cables. That led her to a control panel for the lift hidden under a bush.

::What now? It isn't like we can sneak in this way!:: Mirror said.

::Go back and get the humans. I'll keep watch here,:: Masque replied.

::Be careful. And don't get any ideas about sneaking in there by yourself if the lift opens.::

::...::

::I mean it!::

::Oh, all right. Just go.::

Mirror moved slowly and carefully until she was well away from the lift, then hurried back to the others. She met them partway there, since Elita had already commed them with what the sisters had discovered.

They met about 200 yards from the lift, hiding in a patch of brush. There was some discussion about how to get in there without being spotted. Granted the sisters could turn invisible, but nobody could miss that huge lift opening.

It was Brakedown who came up with the best idea, to start a series of false alarm glitches that opened the lift. After putting up with that several times, they probably would let down their guard and make it possible for at least the sisters to sneak in. Possibly from the inside they would find a way to let the rest of the team in. Masque went over to the controls and checked them out. There was a radio receiver. She tapped in and hacked the system with ridiculous ease, it was just a human network with no scout-level defenses on it. She wrote some code to randomly open the lift, and carefully hid it in their system where it wasn't likely to be found. Then she hightailed it back before the fireworks started.

The first time the lift opened, three bots and twenty humans in black BDUs came out. They were all wearing heavy body armor and carrying the same rifles modified for the heavy explosive rounds that NEST used. They checked all around, found nothing, then went back in, swearing at having to come out in the cold for nothing.

The third time, they left one of the bots and a fire team of humans up top, and a guy with a tool box knelt beside the bush to check the control pad. After a while he got up, shrugged, and went back down.

The fifth time the lift operated on its own, a guy who must have been a team leader or a lieutenant or whatever they had, came up and stomped around and yelled at the mechanic for a little while. Then he went back in where it was warm, leaving the angry mechanic to work on the control pad again.

Then Mirror poked Masque in the arm and told her over their sibling bond, ::There's something weird about that bot. Watch it walk around for a while.::

Masque turned her attention to it, then after a while she realized Mirror was right. He didn't move exactly right for a bot of that type—more like a bot trying to walk like a human. Not...clumsy exactly, but just strange.

As the minutes passed, she became more and more certain there was something really weird about that bot. He stood guard at a sort of attention, a position that she knew most bots would have found uncomfortable. In fact, if they had to stay in one place for a long time, especially in the cold, they usually transformed to a wheeled alt if they had one. And that one did, some kind of a blue SUV if she wasn't mistaken.

::I think it's a drone,:: she replied. ::It doesn't act like a sparked bot.::

::It doesn't act like a drone, either,:: her sister replied. ::I think it's somebot's remote!::

Masque did a double-take. ::How big of a bot would it take to have a remote _that_ size!::

::There are three of them!:: Mirror reminded her.

::We have to get in there to find out what's going on.::

::I think we should wait a little longer. Let them get good and cold.::

::Frag it, _I'm_ getting good and cold. And tired and low on energon.::

::You'll really be complaining if they catch us.::

They waited a little while longer, through a couple of more activations. That time a guy in an expensive coat came out to see what the hell was going on. He turned around, looking suspiciously out over the desert. It was Emery Bodine.

Masque and Mirror decided that was the time to go, when everyone's attention was on Bodine. The lift took them down into a huge bot-sized hallway. Bodine strode away towards a metal stairway leading to a second story door half-way up the wall. The place was _huge_. They saw a lot of human guards, but no bots wandering around, which made sense if they were just remotes.

They made doubly sure their energon masking devices were operational, since in these relatively confined spaces their signatures might be detected otherwise. They explored the place, dodging guards.

One heavily secured door opened to let a uniformed man out. Actually he looked more like a boy who had been given a military haircut and stuffed into a uniform. He wore thick glasses and had red marks on his forehead, as though he had just removed something that fit tightly. Behind him they could see rows of computer stations, there was a man at one of them and a short, dark-haired woman at another. What they were doing was a mystery, since instead of monitors each station had 3D headsets. But they looked for all the world to the two Pretenders like very high end gaming rigs, similar to the ones they themselves owned.

They found barracks for the soldiers, and further on down a hallway blocked off by a set of double doors and a couple of no-nonsense guards. Beyond that was one big bot-sized door. They waited there for a while, until a couple of guys in coveralls, one of them pushing a maintenance cart full of some very large tools, entered the door.

Both of them nearly rebooted. In there were not just the other two bots they had seen before, but spaces for twenty of them. One of the spaces, apparently belonging to the one on guard up top, was missing. Working around them were more people in coveralls and more of what they could only describe as nerds.

Suddenly it all made perfect sense. ::They're not remotes. At least they aren't a bot's remotes. Those kids are remote-controlling them!::

After more exploration, they found a big bay that was being used as a parking lot, the truck was there as well as several cars and pickup trucks, and one BMW.

The easiest way to get back out turned out to be just to wait for the lift to cycle again. Once they got out, Masque hacked the controls again to remove the program that she had installed. They would think the last thing they tried had fixed the malfunction.

Masque and Mirror reported what they had found. Masque asked Elita, ::What do you want us to do now, Prime?::

::Get out of there. We need to let them settle down before we act further.::

::Yes, Prime.::

They went back to Corona and Brakedown. By then they were all dead tired and hungry, intent on nothing more than supper and rest. Nobody even complained about MRE's, and Corona didn't say anything about them eating in her cabin, when it was so cold outside. They all knew not to leave anything lying around by now, anyway. She and Brakedown kept watch, since they hadn't been doing anything.

It took four hours for the _Xan II _to arrive with Red Team. Prime had made a point of asking for President Seaborn's permission with witnesses from both parties in the room when he made the video call, giving the reason that he felt responsible that their technology had fallen into the wrong hands and wanted to make sure that no Americans were harmed by it. Of course everyone in the room knew he wanted to see for himself what was going on, but there was no need to bring that into it, especially if he was willing to put himself on the front line taking out those drones. Seaborn had immediately given them permission, asking Prime to coordinate with Special Agent Abrams on site just as Simmons was doing.

It went without saying that Optimus would copy everything he found out to Seaborn directly, there would be no issues with any of Bodine's potential sympathizers possibly spinning things and keeping Seaborn from getting all the information he needed. It saved him sending Donna out there and risking her cover.

By then, there were several carloads of FBI agents there too. They decided that the humans and the Pretenders would go in first and get into position, before the other bots dropped and lit them up. The area around the secret base was isolated enough that they preferred to keep the fighting located there.

Simmons' leg was bothering him badly enough that everyone could see him limping. Prime told him and Masque to set up field ops aboard Corona, he could do the most good from there. He didn't argue after Abrams and the rest of their team promised to keep a personal eye out for Browning.

They were doing that, feeding data back to Mearing in Ops. Red Team, with Brakedown seconded to them, were having little trouble from a bunch of drones. When they knew they were fighting drones, there was no reason for them to hold back, and vorns of combat experience from the three veterans made it a textbook exercise.

It was complicated by the human agents, but the FBI fire teams were keeping most of them busy. One of them, however, took a shot at Corona.

The explosive shell went right through her light seeker's armor as if it wasn't there. One piece of shrapnel hit something important. Suddenly blind, she rocked with the sudden pain, and tried to keep straight and level. "I can't see!"

Simmons took her control yoke and asked calmly, "Can you switch to radar or something?"

"No, it all goes to my visual processor and I think that's what got hit."

"OK, you need to pull up a little. I can guide you if you'll let me have the stick."

She let him because she didn't want to crash, but it was terrifying. Simmons leveled them off and reassured her, "I do know what I'm doing. It's been a while since I've flown, but I'm certified on this type of jet. As long as you leave me the controls, I can land us in one piece just like your alt form was a real Lear jet, OK?"

"OK."

"You aren't, though. You can hover, right? We don't have to worry about stalling if your airspeed drops?"

"No, I can hover. Brakedown is in the middle of a bunch of them!"

Simmons said, "We'll be there in a second. Let Masque fire your guns."

Corona offered the Pretender a hardline port. She linked directly into Corona's guns, getting a direct feed from their visual sensors and completely bypassing the damaged visual processor.

Simmons was definitely not a combat pilot, and as he flew towards the battle he wished he was. But there were no enemy aircraft–"all" they had to do was avoid getting hit by anything else fired from the ground.

Corona let out a terrified screech as she felt her bonded's peril through their sparkbond. Brakedown was on the ground, with one of the enemy drones standing over him with a spear. Masque opened fire as they came in. The deactivated drone fell across Brakedown, he threw it off him and Simmons saw him get to his feet. He caught up with Red Team, joined up with Skids and Mudflap.

"He looks OK, Corona."

"All right. I want you to keep us around the outside of the main fighting, so Masque can snipe at stragglers. For Primus' sake, watch out for anyone else aiming at us." She was trying hard to keep calm, both for her sake and Brakedown's, but flying blind with a human pilot while people were potentially shooting at them wasn't easy.

Simmons reassured her, "I definitely am doing that, but Prime and the Big Twins are right in the middle of it."

"They haven't got any attention to spare for us, then."

This was the first time Masque had ever seen the front-liners in action, and for a moment all she could do was stare with her mouth open. Then Simmons reached over and poked her. "You're supposed to be shooting, not sightseeing."

Masque jumped, then got back to work. Simmons was quickly learning the seekers' trick of hovering in place to get a shot off, then moving fast before someone could take advantage of a stationary target, but she had to be paying close attention when he called targets so she could fire while they were stopped.

He banked sharply, a move that would have crashed a real Lear jet, but Corona trusted him to attempt the maneuver. She felt something _just_ miss her. "What was _that?"_

"Some kind of rocket. Charlotte, I got a bunch of those guys here with fuckin' rocket launchers. Permission to take the shot!"

"Suppression fire only. The FBI is on your coordinates."

Masque confirmed, "I see them coming." She fired several shots near the people with the rocket launchers, keeping them busy until the FBI could get there to take them prisoner.

By then the fighting up top had ended. Simmons took Corona to the _Xan II_. He and Masque got out, leaving her to Mikaela's care. They hurried to join the people massing to go into the base. Simmons had enough adrenaline going that he didn't really feel his leg, and it looked like he was going to get his chance to go after Browning himself.

*-T-F-Rising*

Mirror got the lift operational. Prime and the Big Twins went down first and secured the corridor, before the rest of the bots and a flood of Feds from various agencies came down.

Bodine and a few others were barricaded inside their ops center, but they were armed and dangerous trapped rats. Rather that rush them, they set up heavy barricades of their own in case they decided to come out firing explosive rounds, and settled in to wait them out.

Brakedown cut the door to the drone pilots' room off it's hinges when there was no answer to the FBI's demands to open up.

All the pilots were collapsed in their seats or the floor nearby, some still twitching, others pale and still. Brakedown shouted, "Medic! We need the human medics over here!" He got out of the way so the humans could rush through the small door.

"What the frag happened to them?"

A medic said, "The lucky ones are dead. The rest of them are gorked."

"What does that mean?"

"Lights are on, but nobody's home. Brain damaged."

Mirror squeezed past them to examine one of the stations. She picked up the 3D headset that was lying there. "Oh, sweet holy Well. Masque!"

Her sister came over and took the device. "What is this?" Masque touched a pad on the device and rubbed some gel she found there between her fingers. "It's some kind of conductive medium."

"You mean they were–"

"I think they were actually linked to the drones. But they don't have any kind of feedback limiters on these rigs, like one of us running a drone would. When the drones got offlined, the shock did _this_ to them. It burnt them out, essentially. How could they set this up and _not know_ they needed to protect themselves from that kind of feedback?"

"They were just figuring it out as they went along. Maybe they didn't really care what happened to the kids. They could recruit some other geeky kid easier than they could build another drone," Abrams said. With one last glance at the medics working on the still-living pilots, he strode back to the barricade with Masque and Mirror in his wake.

He said, "Prime, sir, there's something you need to know about."

Optimus led the way back around the corner. "What have you found, Special Agent?"

Bodine explained about the young pilots. Some of them were being taken out as they spoke. Optimus scanned one of them, and was sickened by the neurological damage he found. That young girl had just enough mental function left to spend the rest of her life in an institution. He copied the scan to Ratchet, hoping against hope that the healers see something that he didn't, after all he was a decent field medic as all the veteran combatants had necessarily become but he was no expert on human biology. Ratchet didn't sound any more hopeful than he was, though.

"If we had known..."

"It wouldn't have changed needing to stop them, sir." Abrams replied. "Everyone would have tried to minimize casualties if we'd known, but who could possibly know taking down a drone up there could do this kind of harm to somebody in a bunker down here? And Bodine wasn't in any hurry to tell us. Leave the blame for this where it belongs."

Optimus nodded, but knowing that and watching the line of stretchers being carried out were two separate things. Bodine had a lot to answer for.

Mirror hacked into the cameras in there. Bodine and four others, including Browning, were in the room. She routed the feed to a laptop in the FBI control center as well as continuing to monitor it herself. When she saw them destroying the computers, she quickly downloaded all the remaining data from them to some external hard drives in other parts of the base. She was too wary of getting a virus to hardline to them herself.

Everyone waited to see what Bodine would do once he thought he had destroyed all the computer evidence. He crossed the room and shoved aside a bank of servers. Behind it was a small hole. Bodine and the others quickly crawled inside and started climbing. The last one in, Browning, pulled the server rack back into place. If they hadn't been patched into the cameras, they never would have known about the escape route. As it was, they notified the people up top to keep an eye out. They ran inside and Prime ordered from the hall, "Somebody kill those lights."

An FBI agent found a switch. Once the room lights were out, Simmons and the others followed the fugitives up the tunnel, once again closing it behind them so the FBI agents in the room could turn the lights back on.

It went a long way, and they came out into the crawl space under a cabin—the very hunting cabin where they had taken shelter! Thinking they had gotten away clean, Bodine and his accomplices had entered the cabin through a trap door and were in the process of getting guns, fake IDs and money out of a closet. They were ditching their own weapons and wallets.

Nobody noticed the six of them getting out of the crawl space into the yard and taking up positions just outside. The six men walked out of the cabin right into the waiting arms of the law.

Simmons walked up to Browning. "Joe Gilmar was my partner for a long time, Browning. Why don't you try to escape? You're going to jail for the rest of your life. New York hasn't got the death penalty this year, so you'll get old behind bars. All you have to do is get past one old guy in a leg brace."

Browning's dark eyes regarded Simmons for a long moment. He thought about it. Then he just held out his wrists for the handcuffs. Life in jail was at least life. Taking up Simmons' challenge was a quick ticket to the morgue.

Mac said, "First smart move you've made, Browning. You're under arrest for the murder of Joseph Gilmar. You have the right to remain silent. If you waive this right, anything you say can and will..."

Simmons walked away. He touched his headset to call home. "Relay back to Prime, please, Ops. We have them all in custody without incident."

"Are you all right, Seymour?"

"I will be, Charlotte, I will be. Status on Corona?"

"Mikaela can't tell in the field. They won't know until she's back here for more tests."

"She went beyond the call, letting me continue to fly her for the remainder of the incident so that she could stay in the fight as long as we were needed. I'm not even a combat pilot. I just know how to get from point A to point B."

Elita said, "After what happened to four of our soldiers last year, that's a risk that more of us would be willing to take."

"Yeah, but I'm not the one I'd expect to be trusted so much."

Elita said, "I am more concerned with who you are now than with who you were fifteen years ago, my friend. I don't know what it takes to earn your own forgiveness, but you have surely earned ours."

"Thank you, Prime. Don't know if you know what that means to me, but I appreciate it."

Mearing reported, "Prisoner transportation is on its way."

*-T-F-Rising*

A few days later, Mearing joined Simmons in New Jersey for Joe's funeral. The few remaining members of Sector Seven who weren't wanted by the law joined Joe's family in Joe's parish church. Afterwards they all got together at Joe's favorite watering hole, a place called Flanagan's Pub. Simmons hugged Dr. Carol Brewster, who was now working at Area 51 in close cooperation with the Med/Sci team on Diego Garcia. Father Mark had come over on leave from his mission work to preach an old friend's funeral. There were a couple of other former agents there, Tony Brewster had retired to become a small town sheriff and Mitch Johnson was working with protective services in Los Angelas, helping abused kids.

Simmons said to Father Mark, "Looks like we're all trying in our own way to earn absolution. Do you think any of us ever will?"

"Speaking only for myself, I don't believe we have to earn it. We wouldn't be able to if we did. That's why we call it the grace of God. You know, from what I've read, the Cybertronians believe pretty much the same thing about Primus' forgiveness. It's there if you genuinely ask for it."

Simmons thought about the sparklings he'd offlined, without even knowing they were living beings. He knew it was their forgiveness he'd have to ask someday. Maybe by then he'd have earned the right to ask for it, and maybe that was all the absolution anyone had the right to expect—to be enough of a mensch to be able to look the people they'd wronged in the face and apologize.

Mearing came over to the bar for another drink, and stayed by her husband's side until they got a cab to their hotel.

On the way, Brakedown called. "Ratchet let Corona out of stasis lock a little while ago. She can see."

"Oh, thank God."

"We're going home for a while, as soon as he clears her to fly."

"Yeah, we're going home ourselves in the morning."

"She wanted me to thank you again. I'd like to add my own thanks to that. You looked out for her when I couldn't. Saved both our lives."

"Just one teammate helping out the others," Simmons replied. "Just seems to be what we do."

"Yeah. I hear Browning pled guilty."

"Yeah, he'll spend the rest of his life in the pen, but if he cooperates, it could be in a better prison."

"What about Bodine and the rest of them?"

"Bodine's up on treason charges. He might get the death penalty. He should, for those teenage hackers he recruited, but he might be able to cut some kind of a deal to get the death penalty off the table. Don't know yet who else he could give evidence against. Tell Corona I said take care of herself."

"I'll do that."

They ended the call. Simmons pocketed his phone, then leaned back against the cab seat and pulled Mearing close against the cold winter night. With Bodine's operation shut down, they were in a better position to face the real challenge of Unicron. For tonight, though, he wasn't going to worry about that. For tonight, he was just going to remember the good times with his old friend.

(A.N.: Chapter Title from Hazy Shade of Winter, by the Bangles)


	50. A Night Without Stars

(Chapter 37–A Night Without Stars)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1.)

(2021-Diego Garcia, deep space)

The words in the file were simple, concise, no room for interpretation. Twelve killed outright. Six in persistent vegetative states, technically alive only until their families decided to pull the plug. Two others who would be institutionalized for life with no hope of recovery. The oldest had been nineteen, the youngest only fourteen. They had been seen as disposable, easily replaceable commodities by those who had made use of them. The FBI had pieced together a story of young people selected from the ranks of highly skilled MMORPG players, traced and identified, then further selected for everything from their families' politics to the resources those families could bring to bear to find a missing child. Potential candidates had been groomed as if for induction into a cult, drawn carefully into a shadow world where their way of life was threatened by a coalition of godless liberals and aliens bent on world domination. By the time Bodine was finished with them, they willingly spent their lives to stop a threat that existed only in the imaginations of madmen. And Optimus Prime had been their executioner.

Usually watching the vast expanse of sea and sky from the point brought a peace of mind that let him think things through, but now there was no peace to be found anywhere. Twenty photographs accused him like an angry jury of broken vows and murder. Fourteen years ago when the first Autobots had fallen to Earth like flotsam on the vast sea of stars in desperate need of some beach to come to land, he had sworn that he would never harm the innocent people who had given them shelter. Now that holy vow lay in twenty blood-soaked shards, innocent lives destroyed by his own sword, or at the very least by those under his direct command. _I didn't know_ seemed a thin defense.

He was the Magnus. One of the vaunted leaders of the world. He made decisions every day that affected the lives of billions. Yet he had not been wise enough to save the lives of twenty young people, all of them possessed of a brilliant potential that should have lit up their world like stars in the night sky. Now those stars had gone dark. And perhaps the saddest part of it was the way the American media had reported it. Those child soldiers weren't seen as victims, but as "homegrown terrorists" who had thrown their lives away fighting a jihad based not on religious convictions but on extremist politics. There were echoes of Columbine and Virginia Tech. The families were left to wonder what they had done wrong.

There would be a storm tonight. The clouds had already closed in and the waves crashed against the rocks. In lieu of a sunset, darkness settled over the island. A night without stars. That was fitting.

Against the fury of the sea, they were all insignificant. Yet the planet itself faced an imminent threat from Unicron. Given the opportunity, he would suck the life from this world and leave it a dead rock floating in space.

Optimus had never felt more unworthy to try to stop him. The next mistake he made might very well cost more than twenty lives.

He heard faint footsteps on the sand and turned to see a human figure moving toward him over the rocks.

"Optimus?"

"Sam." Neither of them was quite sure when he had become "Sam" rather than "boy." Sometime after the firey crucible of Chicago had burnt the last of childhood out of him.

"You made what feels like the mistake of your life and got somebody killed. Join the club."

"I wasn't an innocent. I knew what I was getting into and I was there because I chose to be. Those young people never had that choice."

"They caught a raw deal, but it was not your fault that Bodine lied to them."

"I should have known, Sam. I should have _known_."

"How? How could you have known they'd be harmed by killing the remotes?" Sam climbed onto his hand. "I understand that this happened on your watch, but _it wasn't your fault_. It was Bodine's, for starting the whole thing, for kidnapping and using kids in the first place, for not making sure they'd be safe if a remote offlined. They were collateral damage. It happens because we don't have a choice except fight back. If we'd done nothing in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, we might have had to fight them in some city somewhere with other people's kids in the way, or right here where it could have been our own kids caught in the crossfire. That's the mathematics of war and we didn't damn well start it."

"It was my mistake, Sam. None of us can afford such errors with so much at stake."

"Well, I'm sorry, but we're all going to make them, and we just haven't got time to spend on them. All you can do now is say it happened and move on." The words could have been cold and unfeeling, if it wasn't for the depth of emotion in his friend's dark eyes.

There was lightning and thunder out over the ocean. A lashing wind brought the first of the rain. Optimus carried Sam down to the road, then set him down to transform and opened his cab door. Sam didn't even need to look anymore to know exactly where to put his hands and feet. Their time together seemed short to Optimus, but for Sam, it was nearly half his life.

"Sam, is that you talking or the All-Spark?"

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Hell, Optimus, what makes you think I even know anymore? I want to think I'm still me, but it's always there. Ratchet can't tell me anything other than what's going on in my scans because nothing like this has ever happened before. I haven't aged a day since my bones stopped growing. And the hell of it is, everything I don't know about me—Danny has to deal with it too."

"Has it affected him in any way?"

"You've seen his crayon drawings. Things he couldn't have seen anywhere. With a kid's scribbles, who can know for sure, but Bee swears he draws things from Cybertron. I have all those drawings in a notebook. Maybe when he's older he can tell us what they're supposed to be."

"I wonder if he could be remembering a past life there. Georgie came back to us as a femme. Why couldn't the same road go both ways? Sparklings often draw pictures of their past lives before they can process the information in any other way. It could be something that simple. If that's what it is, it's best not to make an issue of it."

"I didn't think of that. I hope he doesn't start having the damn dreams the way I do, at least not until he's old enough to handle it."

"You still have them?"

"Every night for the last six months. No more of the Cybertronian script—I wish there was, it might tell us something useful. I see Unicron. I figure they're genuine, because I can see the damage from those bombs Ironhide dropped on him. Then there's this...ice cold hunger. And I see Earth, or what's left of it."

"A prophecy?"

"If it is...doesn't mean I won't die fighting to stop it rather than on my knees praying for deliverance. I'm not going to just accept some apocalyptic vision as destiny from on high, not as long as I've still got some fight left in me. But maybe it's a warning, and the All-spark hasn't figured out I got it already. Or maybe I keep seeing it because I'm missing some important part of the message. We don't have all the senses you do. It could be something I'm blind to because I'm human."

"Many of the Primes had gifts of prophecy. I am not one of them. As with so much else, that knowledge is lost to us. If you ever dream of anything more, I need to know."

"I write everything down in a journal so I don't lose any details. But so far there's nothing more than I've told you."

"Sam. You see him against the stars. If you could accurately image that, it might tell us his location and how much time we have."

"No. There isn't a star field like you see when you look up at the sky. Just one band of stars behind him."

"You're describing the empty space between the galactic arms. You can see them, just like the Milky Way from Earth. But the void is broken only by distant galaxies. I think it means he hasn't repaired himself enough to jump. He's still stranded there."

"Then we make use of the time we have, Optimus. Nobody can change what happened to those kids, but we can still do something for their families."

He vented softly. "You're right, Sam. I do know that."

Sam only nodded, if he had learned anything in his life maybe the most important was when it was more helpful just to shut up. Optimus headed home before the main force of the storm hit, the two of them in a companionable silence that didn't need conversation.

When they got to the commons, the only ones around were Georgie and Sunstreaker. There were usually a lot of people in there that time of the evening, but some people had turned in early, and most of NEST as well as a lot of the bots had gone to a big Christmas party aboard one of the Navy ships. Elita had made an appearance with Will and a few other officers, then they had left to let the ranks have their fun. He touched on their bond and found that she was in their quarters.

His bonded was sitting in the lounge watching the storm when he came in. She smiled and made room for him on the couch as he came in. "Did Sam find you?"

"Yes. Did you send him?"

"No, he asked where you might be. He's a good friend."

"Yes. He made me face up to the fact that the universe doesn't revolve around me."

"What did he–?"

"Oh, he didn't put it that way. Just that what happened in Wyoming wasn't my fault."

"How did you get from one point to the other?"

"Who am I to think I can interfere with destiny? I couldn't stop Sam from becoming the All-Spark's vessel, though it changed him and his first-born in ways none of us can anticipate. Why should I have the hubris to think I could have interfered with those children's fate either?"

Elita said, "Because interfering with fate, when we can, is what makes a sentient being different from a stone. A stone is content to lie on the beach and let the waves wear it away to sand. We fight against it and try to improve our lot–the best of us, and that is you, my love, tries to improve everyone's lot before your own. We don't always succeed, Primus knows–but when we get the chance, we try and we keep trying. That isn't hubris. It's the will to live that Primus gave us. We can interfere with destiny, true, but we can't always circumvent it, even when it is cruel."

"True."

"I mourn their loss, so much promise wasted. But ending Bodine's madness prevented even worse, had nothing been done," she said, with a scout's practicality.

"Sam called that the mathematics of war. I suppose in terms of acceptable losses it must have been, but I hope I can never view younglings in that way. Some of them were barely even _younglings_, Elita!"

"How anyone could do that–deliberately lure younglings in harm's way–is beyond me. What did any of us ever do to that glitch to fill him with such hatred? He came from a wealthy family, he grew up in peace and plenty. He had all the opportunities of his world spread out before him from the moment he first saw the light of day. What twists someone like that into such a monster?"

"It wasn't hate. It was lust for power. The hate is just rhetoric to fire up their followers."

Outside, the waves crashed far enough up the beach to reach the edge of the area lit by their security lights. The wind howled around the building, rattling the windows, drawing their attention out to sea. "I hope they have the good sense to stay inside the carrier until this is over," Elita said. "It wouldn't take anything for someone to be swept overboard, or off the docks."

"I'm sure they will. This isn't much for the carriers, not in a sheltered anchorage like this." He checked with Hot Rod and confirmed, "They've got out in deeper waters away from the docks, but they aren't really noticing a rough ride."

Elita nodded. "Optimus, that cold and dark that permeated Unicron. Do you feel it coming?"

"No, love, I'm far more a warrior than a priest. But I believe you when you say that you do. Sam does."

_"Sam? _Our Sam Witwicky?"

"The All-Spark changed him when he became its vessel. Today I found out that change did not end when it left him. He stopped aging–and he dreams of Unicron's coming. I am concerned about what this will mean for him in time to come."

"Whatever comes, he won't have to deal with it alone," she said.

They watched the waves lash the island. Its highest points were only a couple meters above sea level. By all rights, the wind and the waves ought have reclaimed it long ago. Yet somehow it endured the fury of the storm.

Optimus knew the faces of the dead would never leave him. None of the others over all the vorns ever had. But there simply was no time to deal with it now. All he could do was accept, and make ready for the war to come.

*-T-F-Rising*

Many light-years away, Unicron's shattered form hung in the void between stars. Darkmoon's ill-conceived raid on Earth had cost him dearly. He had been forced to delay his advance on the life-force rich world that the Autobot spawn of his accursed brother now called home. All his resources had been turned to the construction of a jump point that his remaining Acolytes could use to gather raw materials from uninhibited worlds, then he had lashed them to make repairs at a feverish pace. Many had been sacrificed, for Unicron needed to consume life-force to restore himself.

He needed a new general to lead his minions in the conquest of Earth. Of all those sparks who had come to him since the beginning of Cybertron's apocalypse, there was only one whose hatred and thirst for vengeance matched Unicron's own. He had diverted resources from his own reconstruction to provide a frame strong enough to contain so strong a spark. "Megatron! From the depths of the Pit, I call you forth!"

A spark, surrounded by a corona of living darkness, appeared above the empty frame. The massive form convulsed as the spark shot into its chamber, then its ruby optics lit.

"Kneel to me, my general, and arise as Galvatron. Serve me, and the universe will one day kneel to you."

Galvatron felt the rush of dark energon through his lines. Once again, to _live_. For now, he would kneel to his "master." For now. One day, he would be the master. It was acceptable to feign servitude as long as it suited his purpose. Optimus Prime must die.


	51. Battle Cry Part 1

(Chapter 38—Battle Cry Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2021—Riverside, Ohio, USA; Diego Garcia)

The sleepy small town of Riverside, Ohio nestled on the banks of the Ohio River west of the slightly larger town of Portsmouth and east of the somewhat smaller town of Aberdeen. Both Aberdeen and Portsmouth had bridges across the Ohio. Riverside was generally seen as a wide place on US 52, someplace that those who chose the old scenic route along the river passed through on their way between Portsmouth and Cincinnati.

It had a marina, one of many along the river catering to the summer crowd of recreational boaters. Further downstream was a commercial dock frequented by the commercial boats and their fleets of barges. Friday night football was a big deal in all the little river towns, and the town was justifiably proud of their Fighting Rivermen, state champions this year. The basketball team wasn't as illustrious, but they still filled the bleachers for every home game.

There were a few stores on Main Street. Parker Brothers Department Store had been there since the turn of the previous century and had managed to stay open God only knew how through depressions, recessions and floods. The Harris Hotel was now part of a chain, but it had served the town since before the Civil War and the chain couldn't change it much because it was on the National Register of Historic Places. Its restaurant was always packed, especially on Sunday after the churches let out. The Family Dollar had only been there for fifty years, and was still considered a newcomer. Anything that was younger than the town's oldest residents was new in Riverside.

That included the Wal-Mart and its satellites of fast food places, little chain shops and a motel. Unemployment had been chronic until Parker Energy Systems had opened a few years ago, manufacturing solar panels. Now people came here from surrounding areas to work at the plant. There were just as many bars as churches, liberally sprinkled among the houses. Most folks had a Ford or Chevy truck parked outside. Maybe not Mark Twain anymore, but Sheriff Andy wouldn't have looked out of place if he walked out of the Main Street Coffee Shop.

American flags flew proudly everywhere, and the people here took that seriously. The mayor was proud that the town offered city-wide wireless Internet as a free public utility, something the local businesses supported because it helped convince travelers to stop here for gas and a cup of coffee and check their email. It also made everybody feel satisfied that they were modern enough, thanks. They could get back to going to the game on Friday and church on Sunday, followed by Sunday dinner with all their friends at the local restaurants, and then to work all week. Nearly everyone who stayed past high school agreed it was a good life, one that suited them.

Riverside had a small county hospital, but most serious cases were routinely referred to other hospitals in surrounding larger cities, depending on which one specialized in that particular malady. The most serious depended on an air ambulance service. Nobody paid any attention to the helicopters taking off and landing at their headquarters between the gas station and the Family Dollar store. Nobody ever kept track of which helicopter out of the small fleet was which. That oversight changed Riverside, Ohio, forever.

Friday evening, the varsity soccer game was just ending in a light rain when one of the helicopters flew over the town. It was dark, no one noticed that there was a fine black spray coming out of the copter. No one also noticed that the helicopter flew past the landing pad.

The panic started fifteen minutes later when ninety percent of the town collapsed in the middle of whatever they were doing. The other ten percent weren't far behind them, as soon as they ran to help one of their fallen neighbors or relatives.

Two hours later, the panic started. A state patrol officer drove through town and was affected. An hour later, another officer sent to find out why she wasn't answering her radio also fell victim. A small line of cars and trucks from all over ended up pulled over a few miles from town. Family of the away soccer team came looking for their kids. One very tough truck driver stayed conscious long enough to make a CB call that panicked all of Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky, and sent the CDC into high gear.

People in hazmat suits came through town and soon found out what was happening. The town was blocked off. The four Cybertronians in the US military, as well as Jolt, Flareup, and the Little Twins, who were on the East Coast, were all sent to Riverside. And an urgent call was placed from Washington to Diego Garcia.

By the time Black Team, Ratchet, Wheeljack, and Hot Rod and Blue Streak, landed the _Xan II _in a field outside town, the rain had turned to a downpour. Ratchet had developed a strain of nanobots designed to kill the infectious ones and not do anything else. He had wanted to spread them all over the world. They wouldn't protect people because they were designed to die if they came in contact with an organic creature, but they would kill any infectious nanobots that got into the environment before a lot of people could be affected. But the humans had decided it was too dangerous, too much chance they would do something unexpected and cause some other possibly worse outcome than getting turned into a Pretender. They got permission to use it now, Wayfarer took off spraying the solution liberally all over town and it was poured into the river both upstream of town, and downstream of the area where the nanobots could have spread.

Elita met with the CDC, who were lining up all the affected people on cots in the high school. There was a confined panic about the babies and pregnant women. Elita was most concerned about what was going to happen when the people started waking up as Pretenders under Unicron's control and turned violent. Everyone was quickly secured, it was going to be a mass panic when they woke up but she couldn't think of anything else to do to keep a lot of people from getting killed. Then they were free to triage the victims, separating the ones who needed supportive care during the metamorphosis from those who were transitioning uneventfully.

When the original panic had settled down, and Ratchet had the school under control, Elita sent several of the bots out to start scanning the houses for anyone who had been missed in the first sweep, including the county roads outside town. The concern was mostly for people who had been driving away from the soccer game and might have wrecked their cars. The inhabitants of a rest home had been missed, and so had a few people who lived in isolated homes.

Hot Rod brought a carload of nurses from the rest home. He suggested keeping them all together, thinking that if they had been working together for a long time, at least some of them might be a cohort once they reached their final form, which would ease the transition.

Elita agreed immediately. "Good thinking, Hot Rod. We already know that existing bonds will easily override the forced bond. I hope that once some of the townspeople are freed from control, the others might prefer the help of their friends and relatives to a sibling bond with a stranger like one of us. So far we haven't found out what would happen if someone rejects a bond, thank Primus, but I suspected that person would be lost to Unicron. I don't want to find out today that I'm right about that. It's going to be bad enough to clean up all the viruses and other bad code that they're going to be infected with."

"I guess all we can do is hope a bonded pair online themselves first!"

Ratchet said, "I can keep them in stasis lock, you know, until we figure out how the bonds go."

"That will help immensely. There are _hundreds_ of them. How are they medically?"

"Elita, we've lost two already and we will lose a few more before this is over. The very old ones aren't surviving the transition," the old healer said sadly. "They're not strong enough for their systems to endure the stress long enough for the metamorphosis to complete itself."

"What about the children?"

"They're fine, the infants are transitioning to sparklings perfectly. Fortunately all the pregnancies are late-term, far enough along to survive without their mothers. I'm a little concerned with precisely how we're going to deliver them but that can be managed."

That was a relief to everyone. Ratchet said, "We're getting a lot of data from this, but I wish it could have been spread out over the next few people to do this _willingly_."

"Optimus is sending Blue Team to help us hunt down the Pitspawn who did this, but we aren't going to have a lot of information until they start waking up to tell us what happened here."

Ratchet nodded. "Why in the Pit did they pick this town? Why not cause a mass panic by doing this in a large city, where far more people could be affected?"

Elita realized why. "Because the more people there are, the harder time Unicron will have taking control of them! Ratchet, you're a genius!"

"Thanks, Prime, but what particular act of genius did I just commit?"

"We need to choose the best few to wake up first, then _all _the rest at the exact same time. If I'm right about what will happen when they all get _furious_ and break loose at once, we may be able to strike out at him, and give him some serious second thoughts about trying this again. I just need to figure out the best way to explain it to them, they have no idea what it means to be a Cybertronian and we'll have to get it right the first time. Iceblade!"

The former Ruth Goldstein looked up from the readings she was taking. "Yes, Prime!"

Elita sent her idea as a burst. Iceblade considered human hacking techniques and said, "What you're describing, we call a denial of service attack. Basically, a lot of networked computers, most of them connected by a virus, all try to hit an address at the same time, tying up its internet connection. We don't have enough bots to actually do that, but if you give all of them some sort of simple attack program and they all send it at once while he's still reeling from having all the links broken, at least a few of the attacks should get through."

"We don't have the power to kill him, but he won't like what he gets," Elita summed up.

"He will surely retaliate."

"Let me worry about that," Elita replied.

"I can help, Prime."

"Good, because I'll want you to spearhead the attack. Catch every attack that goes out and send it to the best port cluster you can find. There's no sense in doing this scatter-shot, we need to overwhelm his defenses with a number of hits if we're going to do this."

Iceblade's human grin was full of Pretender fangs. Revenge for her separation from her son was at hand. "Can you keep him from figuring out what we're doing while we plan it?"

"I hope so. I'm preparing a packet with the attack and the instruction set now. I'll include a defense too, so that those who don't want to participate in the attack can be sure they're protected from whatever he sends back."

Ratchet said, "Just give the sparklings the defense. I'd say the younglings too, but better for them to have something we know will work safely for them, than have them try to get in on the act by experimenting. Some of them may already have enough human programming skill to get themselves into serious trouble."

"Very likely," Elita agreed.

They lost four more of the weakest townsfolk before the metamorphosis was finished. Elita watched as the CDC sealed the last body into a container and carried it away. Then she turned to begin the task of removing the malicious code from the townsfolk.

No one had anticipated having to care for so many victims at once. Elita had spent the last few hours working on automating the process. First she created a network to connect all of them. Then she started a script running that found and eliminated the malware they already knew about. She started scanning the others to make sure there was nothing else, and when there wasn't, she knew it would be safe to start the process of onlining them. She was halfway through that when Blue Team arrived, actually aboard her ship, the _Excelion._

The bonds she found were mostly along family lines, with more sparkbonds than she had expected to find. Marriage was taken seriously here, for good reason. She chose the town's police chief, Henry Jordan, and his wife Laura first, hoping that they would be level-headed enough to handle their change in circumstances. She was right about that, but their first concern after they broke their link to Unicron was their large family, several sons and daughters, their mates and children, as well as their parents, their brothers and sisters, a tribe of cousins.

Elita said, "Sir, I can see that you're related to half the town, and that's a very good thing. You can help them break free of Unicron just as you did for each other. First, though, can you tell me what happened last night?"

"Last night? How long've we been out?" The chief sat up slowly, getting his bearings. He felt more or less OK—whatever that meant now.

Elita patiently showed him how to access his internal clock. "As nearly as we can figure, something happened at the school ball field. Most of the victims were found in that area."

"The game let out, and we were walking to the parking lot with the mayor and a few other people. Laura?"

"I don't know, Hank. I talked to Carolyn about the women's meeting next Monday, and then there was-"

"The Medicopter went over. Remember, it was flying a little low?"

"That's right. You don't think-?"

Elita replied, "That's exactly what I think. Ironhide, if you can manage it without putting your team in danger, I'd like to question that Pitspawn."

"I'll do my best, Prime." He had a magazine of the paralyzation bullets that Bodine's people had used on Hot Rod.

Chief Jordan asked, "Ma'am, what was that thing?"

"Unicron. Until recently we thought he was a figure out of our oldest legends and nightmares."

"He's coming here."

"He told you that."

"Didn't exactly tell me in so many words. He wanted to know about me. Didn't bother protecting himself from some little former human. I got a bunch of stuff, don't rightly know what all of it is."

"May I?"

"That–uh–ESP thing you were doing a minute ago? I guess so."

He sounded dubious, and Laura's fields flared in an instinctive challenge to some femme getting too close to her bondmate. Elita immediately backed off. "I have a sparkmate of my own, and even if I didn't, you would never need worry about some other femme's attempt to come between you. A sparkbond is for life."

Laura made herself relax and apologized, embarrassed. "I've never been a jealous wife. I'm sorry, it must be all the stress."

"No doubt. Protecting one's bondmate is a core level imperative. After everything that's happened to you, it really isn't any wonder," she said kindly.

Laura settled down, and Elita kept the contact as brief and impersonal as possible as she copied the memory file. As always, she felt fouled by any contact with Unicron, even a secondhand one. She advised, "You'd do better to delete that."

"No joke," Jordan replied, happy to do just that. "I heard about the devil in church all my life, but I never expected to meet him."

"Unicron is surely _a_ devil, but if he is _the_ devil, he has limited himself greatly by taking mortal form. With a little luck, if we stand firm, we can win this war."

"You got that right," Jordan replied, optics narrowing. "What's next?"

Elita gave them the long explanation about the different types of bonds. "The strongest are sparkmates, such as you and Laura, and split-spark twins, like Flareup and Arcee over there. I don't think you have any of those here. Next are sibling bonds. There are a lot of those, and they won't always be between people who were born siblings in their human lives. Next are family and cohort bonds. Finally, there is the clan bond, which generally forms around a clan leader or small group of leaders but I think in your case it probably will turn out to be what we call an identity clan. I think you'll come to see yourselves as the Rivertown clan, and continue to elect your clan leaders as you always have."

"How is this going to change us? The way we live?" Laura asked.

"You'll live thousands of years," Elita replied. "Beyond that—as an Autobot I value free will above all else. The last thing I want to do is impose any change on you against your will, and I can sense that most abrupt change would be unwelcome here. I recognize that preserving your way of life is important to you. I will do everything I can to help you do that."

Laura nodded. "That'll reassure folks a lot, ma'am."

Jordan asked, "What are we gonna do about the folks who aren't from around here? Me and my boys can take Janice and Bob, the two state patrol troopers, in. We know them pretty well. But I don't know them others from Adam. Can we help them?"

"If they are willing to be helped, yes. I need you to help me identify the groups. Something else that will cause an immediate problem. We have a few cases of individuals who are sparkbonded to people and, according to the identification that we found on them, most likely legally married to other people."

"Err, yeah, about that, humans don't take their vows as serious as Cybertronians apparently do. Messy divorces and domestic disturbances are something I have plenty of experience with. Sometimes people know more about what's going on than they admit to. They might be keeping it quiet for the sake of the kids or any number of good reasons. We'll let people keep their dignity and sort all that out in private, OK? If there's trouble I'll take care of it."

"Good. We've also identified several people from a short distance north of here."

"That would be the visiting soccer team, from Poplar Hill. I expect a lot of their folks came looking for them when they didn't come home on time. Most of them have friends and family here, though."

Laura said, "Maybe we should figure out who doesn't have anyone first. They're the ones in the most trouble, right?"

"That's right," Elita agreed. "Who else can be the most help?"

"The mayor, Carolyn Stanley," he said immediately. "She knows everything about everyone in town. Then there's old Doc Adams and his wife, Margie. And a few of the preachers. Some people are going to be the closest to their church families, so it probably would be better to have their ministers already awake."

Laura said, "Don't forget the schools. Lots of little circles revolve around the schools. And that bunch of old guys who have coffee down on Main Street every morning."

Hank said, "I'm an idiot. The first ones we want to wake up are the gang from the VFW. They're veterans, so they've got the mindset to handle this already, and they're tied into a lot of the other groups. Carolyn was in the Navy, and Mark Phillips, the school superintendent, was a Marine."

Laura said, "There really needs to be a Pretenders 101 book somewhere."

Elita looked puzzled, but Iceblade said, "Beginning college courses are 101 courses, Prime. I have a collection of files that I put together during my first few weeks, but they're in Hebrew. Let me translate them to English for you. Here's the Cybertronian language file, too, you'll all want that eventually when you start downloading things from the archives. Oh, and Ratchet gave me these."

Laura dragged Iceblade off to the side and started asking questions a mile a minute. Jordan grinned, "Well, there's the freshman orientation program all organized. Prime, let's find all them old VFW boys and girls and get this show on the road."

"I think Carolyn Mayor first?" She said, accidentally slipping into the Cybertronian name/title form, making Jordan grin even wider. Elita quickly found the proper form of address.

"Right." He learned quickly to identify his cohort bonds and went straight to Carolyn's cot.

Ratchet warned him, "Be careful, she might come up fighting like you did."

"No offense, but if you two are the first ones she sees, I can guarantee she will. Step back a little bit, Doc, I got this." There was a note of command in his voice, somebody who was used to being obeyed when the well-being of his people was involved. Ratchet was the same way where his patients were concerned.

Elita mediated, "He has a point, Ratchet, most of them have probably never seen a Cybertronian before. We'll just frighten them. Chief, once your bond settles, if you need help putting Unicron out the airlock, I'll be right here."

"Thanks, Prime. OK, Doc, wake her up."

Carolyn did wake up fighting like a wet bobcat, but it was all directed at Unicron. Jordan showed her how to dispose of the unwanted bond, which she immediately did. He caught the backlash and dissipated it, inexpertly but he got the job done safely. Elita showed him a better technique for that, then got out of the way and let the police chief bring her up to date on the situation.

The Mayor sat up carefully on the side of the Army cot. "Elita Prime. Thank you, and welcome to Riverside. I wish it could have been under better circumstances."

"You're welcome, Mayor Stanley."

"It looks like we have a lot of work to do."

After that, getting the town leaders organized went fairly quickly. They identified the people who had no ties to anyone in the town, but there was one family on vacation who had a strong bond with each other. They were quickly squared away, as were the two state patrol officers and the trucker who had first sounded the alarm.

The most surprising was a college-age kid in a black trench coat with a lot of piercings and a bright blue streak in his hair. He had absolutely no ties to his birth family or anyone else. When Elita woke him he greeted her with a cool respect for a fellow hacker, and that was the only respect he had for anyone.

When he became aware of the bond that Unicron had put on him, he said, "Well, what the fuck is this?" He studied it for a few seconds, coldly assessing it and his new-found capabilities. Then he focused his considerable skill not to snap the bond, but to incinerate it, denying Unicron a path to send a retaliatory attack. Then he constructed defenses as strong as any bot of his class could have put up.

::Sorry about that,:: he said, as if apologizing for nothing more annoying than a stray fly in the room.

Elita realized she knew this young mech very well, from many Internet conversations, often they had taken opposite sides of some very interesting flame wars. ::Why—you're Mithril Ghost!::

::The one and only,:: he replied. ::It's good to finally meet you in person, Prime.::

::Likewise.:: She gave him the file bundle that Iceblade had put together. ::That should answer most of the questions that you might have. Take a moment to look it over, then I'll fill in the blanks.::

She noticed that he reflexively scanned it before opening it, then he quickly loaded the files into memory and set subroutines to read them simultaneously. Within a few seconds, he spoke the simplified version of Cybertronian in the language file fluently, and perfectly understood the listed capabilities of his new form. She doubted it would take him long to discover the unlisted ones. ::What do you need me to do?::

She gave him more advanced versions of the attack and defense programs that everyone would be using. ::Work with Iceblade.::

::Right.::

::If I didn't know your opinion of taking orders I'd offer you a job on the spot.::

::If I didn't know how that would eventually work out, I'd accept. Besides, this town is going to need a good admin, at least to get them started.::

::I can't think of a better person for the job,:: she smirked, wondering how that would go over with the other city officials.

(continued in Part 2)


	52. Battle Cry Part 2

(Chapter —Battle Cry Part 2)

Ironhide took Blue Team, as well as Hot Rod and Blue Streak, to find and capture the Pitspawn if he was still in town. Now that they knew what they were looking for, the first place they checked was the Medicopter hangar, just to rule it out. To nobody's surprise he wasn't there. They headed west on 52, the way the witnesses had seen the helicopter go. Flareup scanned for dark energon. There was a swiftly evaporating trace left by the nanobots, now that they were all destroyed it would be gone within a few hours. Behind them, the sun came up over the hills.

Flareup reported, "I'm getting a reading about five kilometers straight ahead. Target is stationary."

A strip of land between the highway and the river was a patchwork of farmers' fields, copses of trees and the occasional farmhouse. The reading was coming from a barn on an abandoned farm.

The Pitspawn knew they were there, since none of them had stealth mods. As soon as they slowed to turn off the highway, he blasted his way out and took off flying. Ironhide shot him with the paralysis round, and he dropped like a stone, right into the downstream river channel.

Ironhide cursed loud and long. The river water was very murky. Visibility was only three or four feet, and that water was going to be cold. He went in, forced to guide by senses other than sight. He homed in on the paralyzed Acolyte's electrical system and started hauling him in, soon with Hot Rod's help. The two of them were the only ones who dove in the river. They hauled him up on the bank and cuffed him. To make sure he was relatively harmless before they took him anywhere near Elita, Ironhide disabled his weapons. Once the paralysis round wore off, they marched him back to town.

*-T-F-Rising*

Once about a hundred of the new Pretenders had been brought online, they were ready to put Elita's plan into effect. Because they had been onlining them one or two at a time, that was what Unicron had been expecting. He wasn't anticipating gaining and suddenly losing over nine hundred clan bonds within a minute. He certainly wasn't expecting a fierce barrage of attacks, led by Black Team and assisted by a lot of irate, unskilled but determined new Pretenders. Hit a lot harder than he expected, he retaliated with a burst of black ice that could have killed many of his attackers, except that their defenses came up, and Elita put up a mirror wall that returned a lot of it directly to sender.

She had the aggressive tendencies of any Prime. Mithril Ghost was afraid she was going to press the attack, and he wavered between trying to assist her, and incinerating the link between the town and the combat. Elita realized it was time to either attack to kill—a fight in which she would logically have to be outclassed—or quickly retreat while she still could. She listened to common sense and got out of Dodge, then shredded the link. Still furious over the attempt on her sparkmate last year, she was in a very dangerous state. Black Team closed ranks around her, while the Riverside bots gave them plenty of room.

Wayfarer scolded, ::Sister, these people now know exactly what a Prime is! Stop scaring them!::

Elita drew in her fields sharply and made a conscious effort to shut down the combat reflexes. "It's all right. It's over now, he can't find you any more at this distance without that twisted clan bond. You're safe now."

A femme held her new sparkling tightly. When she'd left her seat at the soccer game last night, she had been human and eight months pregnant. Now she was something else entirely and so was the baby. Her husband was off in the military. She had no idea how to tell him any of this. "What's going to happen to us now?"

Carolyn fielded that one. "Absolutely nothing. I've talked to people in Washington and Columbus. We're still American citizens. We still have our jobs, and own all our property. Our personal papers like our drivers licenses are still good, though we do need to get those updated sometime within the next thirty days. As far as supplies go, the Autobots have been good enough to give us several energon cubes that we're going to keep at the city building. That will be plenty for all of us. Doc Adams is going to get the hospital fixed up for us as soon as possible, and he's going to be online with the healers in Diego Garcia if something comes up that he doesn't know how to handle yet."

Elita got the upset femme on a private channel with Lennox, to advise her how to handle the situation with her husband. He offered to send a couple of NEST troops to inform him in person, and she was more than grateful for that. Lennox assured her that he couldn't imagine how anyone could be anything but thankful that his premature daughter was safe and healthy.

Meanwhile, Chief Jordan was informing the families whose elderly loved ones had not survived. Elita raised some loud complaints with Washington when she heard that the CDC had taken the bodies for study and they were quickly returned to the town's funeral home, before the families ever found that out.

One guy who found out that his wife had a sparkbond with another man had to be pulled off them. He ended up going home with his brother.

Two fourteen-year-olds had a sparkbond. They were squared off with both sets of parents in a huge three-way screaming fight, and claws and fangs and barbed tails were coming out on all sides. Elita convinced both families that, since nothing could be done about it and the kids would stick together against all comers, they should either accept it or send the kids to Diego Garcia. To her shock, they decided on that alternative despite anyone's attempt to smooth things over. It turned out the families had been feuding for ages and there was no making peace now. The two fathers hated each other beyond all reason. Elita quickly radioed for guidance on that, dealing with two underage kids. She was advised to get written permission to take them from both sets of parents, and leave them in the Washington HQ until passports could be issued. She sent the kids home with an escort to get their belongings, then aboard the _Excelion, _figuring out of sight was out of shotgun range.

The nursing home survivors were grieving for their dead friends, and many of them were angry with their families for having put them in the home in the first place. After a lot of yelling there, they drew together as a fairly traditional Cybertronian cohort, though they didn't know to call it that. The nursing home director assured them that they could continue to live on the property. Medicare wouldn't keep paying for care they no longer needed, but trailer hookups wouldn't take long to build and a few double-wide trailers could be obtained very quickly, and they could share the rent until they decided where to live permanently.

Elita staved off any more kerfuffles by announcing that the Acolyte who had done it had been captured. There was a lot of cheering about that. Ironhide had taken him to the field where the _Excelion_ and the _Xan_ _II_ were parked. Black Team got back there to find Blue Team, two younglings, a big dog and a cat staring at him. He was staring back. From flared fields and ruffled armor, Elita guessed that he and Ironhide were insulting each other over a private channel. Whatever the prisoner had said to Ironhide looked likely to get him offlined sooner rather than later, and she suspected that had been his intent. Elita sent Ironhide and Chromia back to town to help out if needed, informing them about the nursing home situation.

She sent Optimus a report on the situation, and gave him control to look around. He wasn't sure whether to be amused or appalled at the pint size Romeo and Juliet. Youngling bondings were very rare, but certainly not unknown throughout history. The odds of two sparkmates finding each other as schoolmates had been fairly high on Cybertron. However, if two younglings were truly destined for each other there was really very little that could be done to keep them apart without causing far more harm than letting them be together with the support and guidance of the entire clan. These two, however, had no such help from their families. He left Elita with the assurance that they would be fine as long as they had each other. The tribe would quickly adopt them, he was sure.

Elita went over to the prisoner. "I am Elita Prime. State your designation."

Instead his optics went dark, and he fell and started convulsing. Elita knelt by him and got a hardline link, but recoiled as soon as she realized he had started running a virus that had erased his personality core. It was a horrible form of suicide that left him perfectly healthy but the equivalent of brain dead—and left the Autobots with the responsibility of what to do with him. Elita had all she could do to keep from being infected by it, and by the time she wiped it out, it was far too late for the Acolyte.

Ratchet put him in stasis lock when he got there, a mindless mech could be unpredictable at best. "Good Primus, not even the Decepticons would do something that sick."

Elita said, "If I'd been a little faster I might have been able to stop it. As it was, the virus nearly spread to me."

"We'll need a defense against that, in case it can be weaponized."

She was already outlining such a defensive program and sending it out to the other hackers for input. They would have something ready to push out to everyone before the end of the day.

The little femme asked, "What are you going to do with him?"

"Well, there's nothing we can do to restore his personality. The person who did this to you is essentially dead. It might be that he can start all over again, like a new sparkling, but he won't ever remember anything about his previous life." Ratchet explained. "We'll care for him while we see if there's any hope of that happening."

Elita asked, "Jolt, can you watch the kids until we can get the paperwork straightened out for them to leave the country?"

"Yes, Prime. Can I knock their parents' helms together first?"

"It would just make them more stubborn. When they realize the kids have really gone, and they have an empty house to wander around in and think about it for a while, they might see sense."

The young mechling held his bondmate close. "They won't see sense. They've hated each other too long. We were going to wait until we were eighteen to get married and leave town, but now..."

"What are your names, younglings?"

"I'm sorry ma'am. I'm Toby MacGregor and this is Shawna Perry."

Shawna asked, "Are we married now? Because we're both Christians and we don't believe in being together before we're married."

Elita said, "We don't have the same form of marriage that you do. A bond is evidence of lifetime mating. In my faith, there are traditions about blessing bonds, but that isn't the same thing as a Christian ceremony. If you have a religious custom...I'm not sure how that will be handled. The human marriage age on Diego Garcia is eighteen. I don't believe it's fourteen much of anywhere anymore. If I were you, I'd talk to a minister of your own faith about that."

Jolt said, "There's a Christian chaplain who comes to the NEST HQ in Washington every so often. He doesn't make any distinctions between humans and Cybertronians. I'll ask Captain Fraley to contact him for you as soon as we get there."

"Thank you. I guess that's just one of the things that we need to find out about," Tony replied.

Elita asked, "Do you mean to tell me that you formed a sparkbond without ever, ah...?"

"Yes, ma'am. We're...that is, we've never..." Toby stammered.

Shawna held up her hand to show a promise ring. "We've loved each other as long as I can remember, but we wanted to wait."

Elita said, "Well, I don't see any reason why you couldn't wait as long as you like. Most Cybertronians won't understand it but everyone will respect your determination to do what you believe to be proper."

That seemed to reassure them. They took the stasis-locked former Acolyte aboard the _Xan II _with Flareup to watch over him, and the kids aboard the _Excelion_. Elita's head was pounding badly enough to attract Optimus' attention. She told him about the Pitspawn's suicide.

::Elita, hand off to Ironhide or Wayfarer and get some rest. If I have to comm Ratchet and tell him to order you off duty I will.::

::I suppose things have calmed down enough that I can spare a joor,:: she sighed.

Both of them shuddered as a horrible thought occurred to one of them, they weren't quite sure who had originated it. If she had been infected by the virus, they wondered if it would have broken the sparkbond and killed them both, or if Optimus would still have been bonded to her spark and frame. One fate sounded as bad as the other. She said firmly, ::It didn't happen! We have enough to be getting on with already without worrying about the things we dodged!::

::Absolutely,:: he agreed. They still both expected to wake up from nightmares about that one.

Elita commed Ironhide, ::I need a joor of recharge. See if they need anything back in town, wake me if you need me to come take care of something.::

::Yes, Prime,:: he replied, but they both knew he could handle nearly anything.

Elita found the kids a cabin, so they could have some privacy to rest, and mourn what they'd lost, and to keep their pets from getting everywhere. After that the other bots hurried back to town. After driving behind them all the way, Chromia made Ironhide and Hot Rod both make use of the town's car wash. She complained that they smelled like fish after rolling around in river mud.

Some people were wandering home, and others were hanging around the area of the school gym talking in cohort groups. They split up to cover more of the crowd and answer questions.

Mithril Ghost had offered his services to the Mayor, and on Elita's recommendation she had hired him on the spot to upgrade the town's wifi service, to prevent them having to use satellite uplinks to access the internet. He would start work on that later, but right now he too was answering computer questions from people who, until now, had barely known how to program a coffee maker. Ratchet was at the center of a group of health care workers, nurses and Doc Adams as well as the flight crews from Medicopter.

The truck driver, Jack Bellview, came up to the police chief. "Do I gotta stay here? I got a load to deliver. CDC just cleared my truck."

"No, you can go. Remember to update your licenses. And for now you're still required to take the same rest breaks. What are you going to do for energon? You won't have time to get out in the sun that much if you're driving."

"Buy a cube the first chance I get."

"Take that smallest one. You can drop it back off the next time you're in town, after you get your own."

"Thanks," the trucker smiled.

"We're the ones who owe you a big thanks, this could have gone real bad if you hadn't got the word out."

"I'll be back through in a week or so."

"Careful out there."

The trucker nodded and walked back to his rig. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do when he got home to his wife this time.

The vacationing family, the Millwrights, were the next to leave, but only as far as the hotel. They weren't sure which sounded better, recharge or showers. The families from Poplar Hill started drifting off home one or two cars at a time.

The CDC packed up and headed downriver, intending to take water samples and make sure Ratchet's anti-nanites had stopped the outbreak. But they were sure enough that everything was clear that they had put away their hazmat suits.

*-T-F-Rising*

A few hours later, Elita felt better for having rested. She quickly got some energon, and checked on the kids. They were sitting on the ramp with their dog, watching the morning mist over the river.

Elita said, "It's beautiful here."

"I guess. We've never been anywhere else to compare it to. What's Diego Garcia like?"

"It's a tropical island, there's a US Navy port there. It's pretty quiet, just a small town like this really. Half the island is a nature preserve. A lot of people spend most of their time when they aren't working either on the beach or in the water. I think you'll like it there, most people do."

"What about Scooter and Katydid? Can we bring them or will we have to find homes for them?"

"You can bring them, but they can't run around outside without leashes."

"I can't believe this happened...All our friends get to stay and we have to leave because our dads are idiots," Shawna said.

Elita said, "It's cruel and unfair, but life commonly is. What defines us is how we react to the cruelty and unfairness. I don't know as much as I should about your religion, but in my faith we believe there are often reasons for the very things that make the least sense at the time."

Toby said, "That's in the Bible, too. 'We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.'"

Elita said, "Keep in touch with the rest of your families. They are as close as the internet. Learn all you can from all that you get to see of your world. Many young humans leave home to study. Think of this as that. There is much opportunity hidden in the sadness. Time doesn't mean the same thing to you now. The things that your fathers are fighting about now may not seem as important to them later. Have patience. These things tend to work themselves out eventually."

They were very young, too young to really understand patience, but they nodded politely. "In the meanwhile, you aren't alone," she promised.

"Is there a way we can say goodbye to our friends before we have to go?"

She taught them how to use the comms system. "It would be best if you don't wander around. Your fathers were both in a very dangerous mood last night, and it would be wise to avoid them. Someone will be aboard the _Xan II_ keeping an optic on that Acolyte. If you need anything, just go over there and ask or comm one of us."

"OK," Toby said. "Thanks for helping us."

"You're very welcome, youngling." She stepped away from the ship and transformed for the run into town.

She suddenly realized something. The greatest number of her race were now human-born Pretenders who knew little and cared less about Cybertron. They would make a new way of life here, rooted in Appalachian culture, not that of her lost home. It would be interesting to see how they worked it all out.

Things seemed very normal as she drove down Main Street. It was now about a day and a half since the attack, early on Sunday morning, and the church parking lots were filling with cars, just like every other Sunday morning since the town had been founded. Some people who didn't go to church, and there were quite a few for such a Bible-belt town, were gathering at the local eateries for breakfast.

A small blue sports car with some kids in it just about hit her. She shouted at them to watch where they were going. When they blew through the red light at the next intersection, a black and white with one of the city cops in it tore out after them, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The row of brick stores down Main Street were all closed, nothing opened until noon on Sundays. Some kids ran by on their way to Sunday School.

Nobody would ever know it was anything other than a normal Sunday morning in Riverside, Ohio.

Primus be praised.

She transformed in front of the city building. Mayor Stanley opened her office window and stuck her head out. Elita could see she was in need of a recharge, she must have been busy all night long. Her husband Jay was there, having discovered that Pretenders could still eat and drink human food and gain some energy from it he had brought her favorite coffee and pastries from the coffee shop down the street. "Good morning, Prime."

"Good morning, Mayor Stanley. How was last night?"

"Quiet, thank God. I think most everyone was too worn out to cause any trouble. My husband and I were just about to go to church, then I'm planning to pass out for three or four days myself."

"As soon as I get the final report from the CDC so that we're certain the crisis has passed, we're going to be going home as well. Is there anything else that we can help you with before we go?"

She commed all her department heads briefly, then her eyes refocused and she smiled brightly in spite of her weariness. "Everything seems to be fine. I'm sure as things come up I'll be calling you for advice at all hours of the day and night."

"You're very welcome to do so."

"I don't know how to begin to thank you for everything you've done for us. Please consider Riverside a second home. You're welcome any time."

"That means a great deal. Many of our people, especially those who live in this country, will certainly take you up on it."

"There is one thing. Could you keep me updated on how Toby MacGregor and Shawna Perry are doing? It's a shame the way their fathers are acting. Getting them away from all that until things settle is probably for the best."

"I will. They're understandably upset, with everything that's happened, but they'll be in their own little world for a while once they realize they're safe. Hopefully by the time they start noticing the rest of the world again, their fathers will have come to their senses."

"I'll work on the moms and the grandmas," the mayor replied. "If I don't see you again before you go, Prime, have a safe trip home."

"Thank you, Mayor Stanley."

Chief Jordan pulled his squad car up to the curb and got out. He was in uniform, apparently he had gone home for some rest. They exchanged greetings as he went inside to start his day.

It was around noon when the two ships lifted off. Most people who were out stopped to watch them on their way, but then they got back to whatever they were doing. For all the upheaval since Friday night, the more things changed the more they stayed the same.

*-T-F-Rising*

When they landed in Washington to let their passengers off, Toby and Shawna got their things together and went out onto the landing pad. Jolt subspaced most of their belongings, because they had their pets to deal with. They waved as the ship took off, on their way to drop Flareup off at La Guardia before returning home.

Once Ratchet got the captured Acolyte back to the lab, he was able to examine him and found he had got into position with nothing more than scout-level cloaking and energon suppression systems. He disabled both of those, someone with the mind of a sparkling and the ability to turn invisible was just what they didn't need. Then he, Wheeljack and Elita carefully examined him for tracking devices or anything of the sort. After that, he purged the dark energon from the mech's body. Then they brought him out of stasis and waited to see what would happen. Either he would start to redevelop a new personality core, or he wouldn't, in which case there was no hope for him.

Med Sci was kept busy for a while creating more anti-nanites, which were being spread everywhere. Conspiracy nuts were howling, but most people realized it was a necessary evil.

*-T-F-Rising*

Two weeks later Sam Witwicky awakened from his usual dream session in a cold sweat. He jumped up so violently that he woke Carly.

"Sam? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, honey. Go back to sleep. It's just that dream. I'm going in the kitchen to write it down and I think I'll raid the fridge while I'm in there."

"OK, love, don't stay up too late."

Sam shut the kitchen door before he punched Optimus' code into his comm unit. Instead of the void between the galactic arms, tonight he had seen Unicron against a brilliant field of stars. They were out of time.


	53. Opening Salvo Part 1

(Chapter 39—Opening Salvo, Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2021—Diego Garcia)

At 0300 on a Wednesday morning in June, Diego Garcia was quiet. Everyone was sound asleep except those working the early morning shift. Hot Rod was there with Optimus, they were watching CNN on the big board for lack of anything else to do. Hot Rod was bored stiff, but he knew this was something he had to learn.

Optimus could tell the young mech was about to explode. He had reports to read, contracts to approve and all sorts of daily minutia to occupy a dead shift, but none of it was anything that he could delegate to Hot Rod. He was about to send the youngling out on patrol for both their sanity, when a call came in from the _Chicago_.

The American destroyer was one of three Earth Forces ships that had been on picket duty at the far edge of the system. Its commander, Air Force Colonel Jake Brewster, was a short stocky man with buzz cut red hair and bright green eyes. "Delta Golf, this is _Chicago _Actual, priority Alpha Red."

Optimus slipped easily into the EDF jargon that was a mix of terms from several nations and some that were unique to the EDF and the ships they flew. "_Chicago_ Actual, this is Delta Golf Actual. Copy Alpha Red."

"You have incoming multiple enemy cruisers. Six of them jumped right into our lap. We put two of them down before they got our drive. The other four of them made it past us. _Santa Maria_ and _St. Peter's Star_ are attempting an intercept jump but I don't think they'll make it before they hit atmo. From their trajectory they could be planning to overshoot you and hit some target in Africa, but I'm not betting the rent. ETA ten minutes. Sent to Moonbase and Mjolnir."

"Roger that, _Chicago _Actual." He was already sounding alarms all over the island. Wayfarer and Mirage, and a couple human pilots, got _Excelion_ and _Xan_ _II_ in the air, and planes started screaming off the decks of carriers in the harbor as well as from Diego Garcia's airstrip. Mearing and Simmons came running, followed by Masque and Mirror, and then by Li and Sam.

"Hot Rod, get over to the residence and rendezvous with your team, defend the sparklings and keep the Tribe from doing anything stupid!"

"Yes, Prime!" He took off. Optimus went out with the others and transformed his ion cannon, powered it up. Nearby a NEST trooper readied an AA emplacement. Offshore, a battleship deployed her rail gun. Those massive things read to him as Cybertronian, for all intents and purposes, but they were a human invention. By now sirens were wailing all over the island.

Five minutes later the lights went out. They could hear shouts and screams from down in base housing as dependents raced to the bunkers.

Elita scanned the skies, processing visual data in search of any distortion that would indicate an incoming cloaked ship. When she found the first one, she passed its location to the rail gun. The captain had sense enough to trust her and fire.

No unshielded ship, Cybertronian or otherwise, was likely to be in flying condition after being hit by a hyper-accelerated half-ton bullet. That one was no exception. It hit the water like a falling rock and sank.

The other three came visible and put shields up, they drew fire from the planes circling the island as well as from bots and gun emplacements on the ground. They made a run on the island, but their intent to recreate Pearl Harbor failed when the ships activated their shields and point defenses. And, instead of the projectile weapons they were expecting, they discovered that three of the AA guns were ion cannons.

Their rate of fire was limited to the reaction time of human gunners, which meant slow by Cybertronian standards, but they had a massive punch, enough to buckle the cruisers' shields. Optimus passed that intel to Admiral Sandrington. "Get the gunners to fire in sequence! The second or third one might get through!"

As the first cruiser came in range of his personal weapon, he took advantage of his own intel and waited for it to take a hit from one of the cannons before firing. He hit the heavily armored bow, but still managed to hole the cockpit. Whatever he hit, the enemy ship slid sideways and rolled on its side as it dived into this end of the runway. It went up in a spectacular fireball and rained flaming debris all over that whole end of the airfield.

Ironhide was giving another one a pounding to remember, but its shields were barely holding. He and a lot of other bots had to dive for cover when it strafed their location. It landed on the beach up by the firing range and let off a squad of mechs who used the palm trees as cover.

Unfortunately for the last one in line, Hound was up in the jungle. He circled around to lie in wait by the trail and waited for the enemy to go by him. He leapt out long enough to stab the mech bringing up the rear through the throat, then disappeared back into the dense jungle before the rest realized what had happened. There were distinct advantages to being a smaller bot in this terrain.

The third cruiser made a pass over the military base and base housing, spraying the metamorphosis nanobots as well as firing several large bombs that took out about a dozen structures. It took heavy fire from both Cybertronian shipsand a squadron of Navy fliers, then Wayfarer turned _Excelion _over to Mirage and came down the ramp, gracefully dropping onto the hull of the cruiser. She transformed to her biped form and started firing into the cockpit. Return fire from inside forced her to retreat, but she had definitely distracted them from their attack run. They landed on the damaged runway and the Acolytes scattered out in base housing, intent on killing anyone they could find. Mirage fired into the cruiser through its open ramp, taking it out as well as a pair of Acolytes who had been slow to clear the LZ.

Prime ordered, ::Red Team, Black Team, to me! Blue Team, take the ones coming in from the proving ground, then join us!:: NEST fire teams were taking positions to defend the compound against anything that got past the bots.

The Acolytes had split up to do the most damage, forcing the teams to split up to counter them. Optimus sent the twins off together one street either side of him, he could keep everyone in sight over the one-story houses. He knew about where Elita was, Black Team was cloaked and coming up from the beach. Once Red Team forced the Acolytes to engage and flushed them out, the scouts could enter the melee or snipe from ambush, wherever they could do the most good. Wayfarer was especially effective at coming in cloaked from some odd angle and decloaking just long enough to hit and run. It was effective enough that he was glad the 'Con seekers hadn't been able to do it.

The first few went down easily and Optimus was beginning to think Unicron had nothing but ineffective green troops. But then things went bad in a nanoklick. A woman screamed. He took in an old lady carrying a baby and holding a toddler's hand. A Pitspawn was taking aim. He judged distance, there was no way he could reach the Acolyte in time, or swap out his sword for his ion cannon. He launched himself into the line of fire, there was nothing he could do but shield block and pray. The shield took most of it, but a respectable amount of energy still caught him in a lightly armored area above his left hip. He rolled hard and dropped the now-useless shield to fire a burst from his auto cannon. He missed by a mile, but it was enough to send the Pitspawn scurrying out of the middle of the street.

That did him absolutely no good. Both sets of twins were immediately all over him.

Optimus was just starting to realize exactly how bad he was hit when Elita got there, maybe five seconds later.

Black Team formed a line around them. Elita slammed up her ice palace and ordered Red Team, ::Go kill those glitches!::

That imperative sent both sets of twins out hunting. Very soon the immediate area was clear, but they knew there were still two more Acolytes unaccounted for, plus however many Ironhide and the Sisters hadn't yet accounted for.

Shimmer commed something to Bumblebee and transformed to her stealth form, she needed smaller servos to make the field repairs necessary to halt a very dangerous set of cascading failures initiated by a severed main coolant line. Bee took a position where he could guard both his mate's vulnerable inert form and his downed leader. Wayfarer hovered right overhead.

Ratchet transformed on the run. Shimmer got out of the way and reported what she had already done. Ratchet hardlined and obviously didn't like the data he got back. "We need to get you to Medbay. Elita, can you transport him on top of your alt form?"

"Yes, if you can get him up there." She transformed and lowered herself until her suspension was resting on the road.

Optimus realized why everyone was acting so serious when he tried to get up and nothing below the injury responded. He clamped down on panic when his attempts to reroute around neural cables also failed. This would be recoverable. Probably.

Bee and Ratchet helped him up. Red Team broke off hunting the last two stragglers, leaving Black Team to do that while they escorted the Primes and the medic back up to the compound.

Optimus called, "Shimmer! There was a civilian woman and a couple of children. Make sure they get to safety."

"Yes, Prime," the sniper replied.

"I've got 'em!" Georgie replied. "Safest thing would be for Ratchet to run them up to the Residence with you!"

Ratchet popped his door and the little family was quickly ushered into his Hummer alt.

The old lady said, "He jumped right into the path of a shot to save us. If it weren't for him, my granddaughters would be dead right now. Will he be all right?"

"Most likely," Ratchet said. "What were you still doing out here?"

"The explosions scared Heather and she hid under her bed. It took me a minute to get her out. We were trying to get to our bunker. I didn't know there were enemies right there."

Ratchet realized there was no sense in yelling at them. Panicked children, like panicked sparklings, just naturally tried to hide somewhere.

Elita saw them safely to the residence with the other human dependents there, then took the Big Twins back out with her, still leaving everything outside her ice palace locked to her sparkbond with Optimus.

Bluestreak was at the rear door and Hot Rod was covering the main entrance into the commons. Ratchet told him to help with Optimus and put the Little Twins on guard duty. Skids took the door, Mudflap was right inside Med-Sci with Star and Anna.

Optimus refused to allow Ratchet to put him in stasis. "There's no pain, and if you find something that you think is going to upset me, better to deal with it now than put it off till later. In the meanwhile, if I can't do anything else, I can still help coordinate for everyone who's out there fighting."

"What fighting? They should have them all by now, the island isn't that big."

"Sideswipe said one of them went swimming in the lagoon somewhere, and Ironhide thinks there's still at least one on the loose in the preserve."

"OK, there's no pain now because you shorted out a neural bus, but don't be surprised if that changes once I replace it. Cut the sensitivity to about twenty-five percent."

Optimus did so, he definitely didn't want to distract Elita with an unexpected excruciating pain while she was in the middle of a fight. There was a boom from out over the water. "Elita says the Navy has started dropping depth charges."

Ratchet said, "That's all fine and good as long as they don't let him escape the lagoon. If he gets out into the ocean we'll never catch him. Might be a pinch."

There was nothing. Optimus was starting to wish something _would_ hurt—anything had to be better than this Pit-be-damned numbness. He couldn't have testified in court that his legs were even still there.

Elita sent a wave of comforting warmth. She distracted him, ::If you were that glitch of an Acolyte, where would you try to run?::

::They've got to both be trying to get to that last cruiser.::

::Shimmer and Georgie are already aboard it. No one's made a try for it yet.::

::So what in the Pit are they doing..."

::What was their objective here? So far they've wasted lives and resources just to shoot up the base. Possibly their intent was just this, to compromise our leadership and terrorize the ranks, but it should be fairly obvious what they've accomplished is to infuriate people more than frighten them into compliance. This smells like a diversion but what else is there for them to do here besides start a fight with us?::

::Admin,:: he replied shortly.

::Of course.::

He commed Mearing. ::What's your status?::

"Things are quieting down. They've started putting out the fires. Still no sign of those two Acolytes, though."

::Elita and I are concerned that Admin may be a target.::

"Copy that. A few of the civilians took shelter here, they thought it would be safer than their residence building so I let them stay. It may have discouraged the Acolytes to find a lot of bots in here instead of just a few humans."

::Right, they can't know most of them are unarmed.::

"How are you doing?"

::Ratchet's still working on it. I seem to have made a lot of extra work for him. I'll send someone up there to assist with security.::

"Thank you, Prime," was her calm reply. When the comm call dropped, she told her team, "The Primes think Admin may be those last two Acolytes' target. Masque, Mirror, target your scans to the immediate area of this building."

Mirror reported, "They're here, hiding right off shore!"

Mearing reported that. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker came up from town, while Blue Team came tearing down the beach from the preserve. Ironhide started it by dropping a big explosive round into the sea.

Both Acolytes came charging out of the water. One was small, nearly a minibot. He cloaked as soon as he was clear of the surf. The other one was a big, stocky mech who fought with a huge spiked club. The spikes could also be fired as projectiles, as Sunstreaker found out when he took one through the shoulder. He replied with a burst from his other cannon.

The mech got hold of Arcee and threw her onto the roof of the residence. She realized she was mostly unharmed and went to the edge of the roof to start shooting down at him.

Chromia was looking for the other one. He realized that and got behind her, planning to stab her in the back. The wily old warrior sensed him somehow, though, and pivoted quickly, blocking with her wrist blades. "Your mistake, mech. What's your designation? I like to know who I'm about to kill."

"My designation is no longer relevant. We are the blades of Unicron."

"Suit yourself. Tell him hello from Chromia of Iacon when you see him." She broke the blade lock with a move that forced the Pitspawn back and he barely blocked her follow up attack.

They traded blows for a while, the Acolyte held his own but had to keep falling back. He came to the fence and jumped it, with Chromia right behind him. By now they had left the beach fight behind them and they dodged around the tall palm trees on the lawn between admin and the residence building. The loud clang of steel on steel drew attention from both buildings.

The Pitspawn threw a trash can at Chromia, knocking her off balance long enough to disengage and cloak. She fired a full auto burst into the area where she had last seen him, without hitting anything.

::Damn! Helms up, I lost the fraggin' scout!::

Chromia looked around. There was a high pressure water hose that someone had been using to wash down the parking lot. She grabbed it and sprayed it around, found her enemy picking the lock to the back door of the residence. "Blue, watch out!" She warned.

The youngling started shooting as soon as the door opened. The Acolyte came visible and staggered, hit a couple of times, then he threw something inside. Blue yelled, "GRENADE!" and threw it back out as hard as he could. It hit the water before it exploded with a deafening roar and a huge spray of seawater.

Chromia gunned down the Acolyte. She caught a glimpse of Bluestreak staring out at the ocean in shock at how close that had been. "Good job, mech, now pull it together and secure that door!" She pivoted and headed back for the beach.

By then everyone had converged on the last one. Several bots had been injured by the spike projectiles, but Sideswipe was now keeping him too occupied to fire any more of them. The problem was that he was so heavily armored that none of their weapons could get through.

Until Elita got there with her energon blades.

"I'll break you in half, femme," he growled.

"You're welcome to try," she replied. They circled, getting each other's measure. Elita batted one of the spikes aside with her force shield.

Wayfarer got Arcee down from the roof, but there was nothing they could do. There just wasn't room on the beach for any more bots to try to get in on the fight, not with Sides and Elita taking the Acolyte on hand to hand and Ironhide just waiting for a clear shot.

Elita never let the mech get his servos on her, she knew he would make good on his threat if she did. But he wasn't as fast as she was, nor as skilled. She shifted to a dodging, weaving style that made her very hard to hit, and struck in passing whenever she got the opportunity. That wasn't the way one normally used energon blades. They were designed for quick devastating strikes, not fencing matches. She had the mass to use her own cooling systems to augment the ones contained in the blades to extend the time before they shut down from overheating. Ratchet was not going to be pleased with the maintenance that would require later, but right now all she cared about was assuring that there was a later.

He slipped in loose sand and went off balance. She lashed out with a kick that knocked him sideways, but he caught himself and kicked back. The impact knocked her into the water, and Sides jumped on his back when he tried to grapple her. The Acolyte managed to catch the front-liner's wrist and slammed him into the shallow surf with a terrible, shattering impact.

That gave Elita time to get her feet under her. She came up under his guard, and her blade caught the lower edge of one of his chest plates. It ripped a three-foot gash in the metal before tearing free.

She had done some damage, dark energon bled steadily from the injury, raising a cloud of steam as it hit the cool water. It didn't seem to slow him down much though. Sides half-dragged himself out of the way.

Elita's optics flicked to Ironhide. Abruptly, she ducked, and the weapons specialist opened fire with his fusion cannon.

The Pitspawn was hurt badly but still standing after that. More importantly it had taken his attention off Elita. Her blade struck the gash in his armor, grated for an instant, then went the rest of the way into his spark chamber.

She staggered under his dead weight and extricated herself. "Fan out and search the island! I want to be sure that's all of them!"

She and Ironhide helped Sides up to the residence building. Sunny and a couple of others were also too badly hurt to continue without getting patched up first. The rest of them made a thorough sweep of the island until they were convinced the attack was over.

Prime had already sent Wheeljack up to examine the captured cruiser, which could be an intelligence gold mine.

Elita was low on energon and feeling the effects of running too-scalding-hot fuel through her cooling systems when she got back to the residence, but she kept her complaints to herself. Ratchet was still busy with Optimus and the others were lined up waiting for Mikaela to get to them. Those who only needed minor repairs were standing around talking, clearly just using that as an excuse to hang around and hear any news about how her bondmate was getting along.

She went over there, staying out of Ratchet's way, but letting Optimus see for himself that she was all right. "How bad is it?"

Ratchet told them both, "I've replaced all the damaged components, but there's still nothing. I'm beginning to think the short arced to your processor and memory, and did some damage there. Elita, since you're here, it would be better if you check that out. This is your area of expertise."

They connected wrist lines. It took Elita only a moment to determine that Ratchet was right. The area that controlled his body from the waist down was burned out. The effect was very like a human stroke, but not quite as catastrophic since it could be worked around. Elita helped him move less speed-intensive processes to secondary areas, then recover from a backup and rewrite the affected codes to undamaged areas, then lock out the damaged areas so they couldn't cause glitches. It was _possible_ to replace a damaged processor, but nobot _ever_ wanted to do that unless there was no other choice. Only a full reformat into a new frame was worse. However, that loss was something he would feel for the rest of his life—he would always have to shift processes to secondaries to make up for the lost capacity. One more battle scar in a lifetime of them.

The pain of his injuries slammed back, even at twenty-five percent he locked up with it briefly until he reduced sensitivity once again. But as he had suspected, even that was better than the dead nothingness that he had endured for the last few hours.

Ratchet finished his repairs quickly then, and moved on to the others.

He hadn't specifically told Optimus not to leave his berth, but Elita clearly wouldn't stand for it if he tried to get up. He pinged the other team leaders for reports, then let her ease him into recharge.

By that afternoon, the fires were out and the wounded had been tended—and the dead counted. Twelve people in base housing hadn't been as lucky as the family that Optimus had rescued. NEST was hit hard, three soldiers had lost their entire families. Five more people had been turned to Pretenders, three from the port but also the wife and child of a NEST agent. Wheeljack's counter had worked, though, killing the nanobots before they could invade covered areas. Only people who had been outdoors to be directly hit had been affected. All told it could have been much worse, without the _Chicago's _warning.

Optimus gathered the senior staff in ops as soon as he could escape Medbay, to discuss their course. Mearing said, "It seems certain that the attack was aimed at dependents. Their efforts were focused on base housing and the residence building."

Graham said, "It's the London Blitz all over again."

She replied, "Exactly. We don't have time to do much to fortify against it."

Optimus said, "We need to send all the non-combatants to safety elsewhere. No one except critical personnel should be here where they know to look for us."

Mearing said, "The US has already volunteered to shelter refugees."

Lennox said, "We already have procedures in place to evacuate our dependents back home when necessary. I'll pull the trigger on that. I believe that Admiral Sandrington already has."

Elita said, "We should move our command center to the high port. It would be easier to defend than an island in a gravity well. When they bring up their capital ships, there'll be nothing to stop them from using a mass driver to drop a big rock on us from orbit."

"We can't defend _anything_ against ships of the line, Prime," Ironhide said. "The only thing we've got resembling a carrier is the _Ark Royal,_ and she can only field one squadron. They accomplished their objective. They proved they can hit our families and there's not a fraggin' thing we can do to stop them."

Optimus said, "You're right up to a point, Hide. We can't stop them until we can take this straight to Unicron. You proved we can hurt him. If we can hurt him, then we can kill him."

Elita said, "I doubt he's going to be as easy to surprise the next time."

"If it was easy, they wouldn't need us, because anybody could take the bastard out," Lennox replied, a study in casual confidence. "He's lost four more ships today and _we captured one intact. _Let's see what Que gets out of that."

"Will, you made a career of fighting people willing to commit suicide to advance their cause. What do you make of these fanatics?" Optimus asked.

"They're not fanatics, they're one step above drones. I'm not saying they don't genuinely worship Unicron, clearly they do. The one in Ohio proved that. But he isn't _depending_ on their fanaticism. Unicron keeps them on dark energon so that he can control them directly. If we can take him out, his forces will fall apart. They won't know how to take orders from anyone besides their glorious leader."

Elita said, "It comes back to what Ironhide said, we don't have the resources to mount a direct attack on Unicron."

Optimus said, "We'll need to get a small group in to attack a vital area and kill him. He's not the only one who can set up a mass driver bombardment, either. We have time to have the miners to jump small asteroids into orbit and start attaching drives to them. At the very least they'll keep some of his ships occupied. It remains to be seen what ideas the other governments have. I'll find that out tonight."

(Continued in Part Two)


	54. Opening Salvo Part 2

(Chapter 39—Opening Salvo, Part 2)

The next day, the island was bustling with activity as the civilians prepared to ship out.

Chromia gave Star a last hug. "We're depending on you kids to take care of each other, and back up Sara if she needs it. Watch out for people who might think it's a good time to grab one of you for a test subject or something."

"Where are they sending us?"

"Norfolk, Virginia. There are some unused barracks there, one for the humans and one for bots."

Star held her mother tight for a moment and then turned to her dad. He picked her up like he'd done when she was a sparkling. "Be careful, Little Bit."

"You guys are the ones who need to be careful. Promise me you won't take any more chances than you have to."

The way she had phrased that _hurt._ She understood in ways a youngling her age shouldn't that risk was an unavoidable part of their jobs. She wasn't asking them not to do what they all knew they had to do. She just asked them not to get killed doing something stupid. "Promise, sweetspark." He kissed the side of her helm, then reluctantly set her down. Her parents said their goodbyes to Firecracker then.

They transformed out in the commons and John Parker got in Firecracker's cab. Shaker hugged Optimus and Elita goodbye, then he and Wheeljack hugged hard. Shaker was growing into a big, sturdy mech, he was already taller than his dad.

Bee and Shimmer were saying goodbye to their twins, Shimmer and Firefly were both crying and Bee and Skyrocket were trying hard not to.

Will gave Anna a hug and a kiss. "Look out for them for me," he told her. "You got the most important job in NEST right now. And take care of your mom, as much as she'll let you."

"Yes, sir." Anna had only packed a light duffel.

Her dad gave her a rifle. "I hope you don't ever have to use this, but if you need it, don't hesitate."

Her eyes took on a look of determination. "Don't worry about us, Dad."

Sara came out wearing her old desert camo BDUs, carrying her rifle and rucksack. Arcee took a picture of the two of them together and emailed it to Will, with the caption, Original and Photocopy. He grinned and immediately emailed it to half a dozen other people. Then he kissed Sara goodbye.

Toby and Shawna came up to say goodbye to Elita. They were in their Cybertronian forms, so Will could only tell them apart by their markings. Shawna's armor was deep blue, and Sunny had painted it for her in swirls of aqua and turquoise and silver. Toby was patterned in black and silver, he had chosen to have his human form's tribal armband tattoo replicated on the silver parts of his armor. Elita sat on her heels to hug them goodbye.

Most of the civilian bots were going also, except three who had decided to become Autobots and make their stand with the rest of them. Thundercracker, Backdraft and Icefall had decided to fight as well, though only as neutrals. It would be a cold day in the Pit before that proud seeker bowed knee to Optimus Prime or took the scarlet, and Draft and Icefall followed his lead. Optimus wasn't about to let former factions get in the way of having three more skilled warriors against a shared enemy. At least if they all got out of this alive, they could live freely as neutrals rather than remain imprisoned at Edwards AFB. TC was now at Andrews with Stormracer and Corona, while Draft and Icefall were here with Brakedown, Starspin and his brothers Cliffjumper and Blaster. Starspin had Sandy there. He hadn't wanted to bring the driller to fight but there was no doubt Unicron's followers would kill him if they got a chance, so it would be more dangerous for him to leave him unattended at the Moonbase. The six of them and the driller would make an effective team, though there was some argument where to station them. Transporting the huge workbot by air would be a job even for the _Excelion, _but then Ratchet had informed them drillers could swim just like bots, and faster than any Earth ship. The driller could easily transport the whole team in his large passenger space.

Optimus was sending Hot Rod and his brother and sister along to protect the Tribe and the civilians—and to get Hot Rod out of harm's way. If he and Elita fell, the mechling would still remain to take their place. Kylie was riding with Bluestreak. Hot Rod offered Toby and Shawna a ride.

Many of the Chagassians were leaving, but this time not forever. Most of them who were of the proper age had volunteered to fight for their home and their world. It was the old, the young, and pregnant women who were being sent to whatever safety existed in Mauritius or the Seychelles where they had lived in exile before.

The commons felt empty and cold with the Tribe gone. Que didn't act like he knew what to do without his son and his apprentices. They watched as the _Excelion_ lifted off into the clear blue sky. Diego Garcia was once again a military base on a wartime footing.

The senior staff gravitated to Ops. Elita had been surprised that Carly had stayed, but she had sent her children with Sara. She had just said that it was her fight too. Maggie and Glen were there also.

A couple of days later, Mithril Ghost and some friends of his came walking up from the airport looking like something out of the Matrix. They were as close as brothers and sisters, some of them had such accented English they could barely understand each other unless they texted whatever they wanted to say, and none of them had met in person before yesterday when they had got together in the Nairobi airport. None of them paid the bots any more attention than they did any of the other people on the island, which was to say little at all.

Frida was a white-blond Swede whose shockingly blue eyes earned her a double-take from every bot she passed. Shiro was Japanese, dressed in a business suit, and the color of his eyes was a mystery because he never took off his mirror shades. Nero Jones was almost seven feet tall, twenty years older than the rest, with skin so dark it was almost literally black, an easy grin and an infectious laugh. He was the only normal-looking one of the lot, wearing a plaid shirt and tan walking shorts and a pair of sandals, but on closer inspection he had the calluses and graceful economy of movement of a highly trained martial artist.

Elita happily gave them a ride up to Ops and called Maggie, Glen and Dutch over to make introductions. Before they found a place to sleep, they wanted to know where they could set up and where they could get a steady supply of Mountain Dew. Then Elita turned them all loose on the Acolyte cruiser's computer systems. Optimus gave them a bemused look, thinking with mixed humor and sadness that Jazz would have loved to meet them.

::Where did you find them?:: He asked.

::The Internet, of course. Actually we all know each other from a few white-hat forums that I visit when I can. They're some of the best out there. I knew Mith was coming, but he convinced the others. I have a team of cyber-warriors here, Optimus. This is as good as two or three more destroyers, for the effect we can have on a battle. If Que can get them outfitted with enough hacking decks, we can deploy them away from here.::

::I'll get him right on it, since they can obviously handle the cruiser.::

Elita's optics brightened as she considered the further implications of that statement. ::Handle it? Get us a pilot and an engineer and they can reflag it! It's already got stealth capabilities.::

Que volunteered as ship's engineer, and Will seconded them a couple of NEST pilots. Que jumped into tearing out the pilot's station and some of the other stations, and replacing them with human-sized versions. Maggie and Glen already knew Cybertronian hacking decks inside out, they put four more together with all the RAM and the fastest processors they could find. Then Elita took the one meant for Mith and upgraded it to full drone status.

The Ohioan asked, "What did you do?"

"Hardline to it and see for yourself. Human hackers are limited in a direct confrontation with a scout by their reaction time and the rate at which they can exchange data with their deck. Pretenders, on the other hand, are comparatively lightly armored in such a confrontation. Masque and Mirror came up with this. By controlling it as a drone, you gain the processing power to get into the thick of a cyber-battle and survive. I'd actually consider using one myself under certain circumstances because it serves as a gateway. If an intruder gets that far, your own defenses should allow you time to drop your hardline before you get cored."

Maggie said, "That's going to make Mith a lot more effective than we are."

"Against a sparked enemy, yes, but mostly you'll be dealing with drones. That's no different from any other supercomputer."

She and Glen looked at each other, and came to some silent consensus. "But if we became techno-organics, we'd be better fighters, drones or not. This is our _world_ at stake."

Glen nodded. "Besides, who wants to get old and decrepit if you don't have to?"

Having observed the silent discussion, Que said, "Human soul mates tend to find each other, and that translates directly to a sparkmate bond after metamorphosis. Elita Prime can tell you there are some serious drawbacks to that. In purely military terms, if you do have a bond and we lose one of you, your team would be two bots down, not just one. That's a factor you need to consider."

Elita said, "He's right, in purely military terms. But I have to say I think the advantages of having more techno-organics on the team would outweigh the disadvantages as far as that's concerned."

Frida said, "The rest of us could do it, we only just met in person a few days ago."

Que said, "Since the devil's advocate position apparently falls to me, you'd also be giving up the chance to have your own biological children. You might not even get the chance to adopt for a long time, because kindling a new spark is a life-threatening risk for everyone involved. Georgie was the last time we did it. Adopting human children would be a possibility."

"We won't be having kids if we're dead, and I damn well won't be a slave," Nero replied. "I'm in."

Shiro said, "As am I."

Elita said, "Take some time to think about it. You're making a massive, life-altering decision that can't be undone. Think about your families back home. Some of your countries might not even recognize you as people afterward. Ask Mith all the questions you can think of. We'll discuss it again tomorrow."

They went back to work on the ship, but his human teammates came up with a lot of questions for Mith. He showed them his Cybertronian form, which brought work to a dead stop. Elita had to admit he had developed a striking form, especially when he popped a set of sharp claws. "You get a lot of choice about what you want to look like and what capabilities you'll have. I don't have a built-in gun like most other bots do, I opted for a variable power laser. It isn't as effective as a weapon, but I use it all the time working. Same reason I have claws instead of a dagger, too."

Shiro said, "Well, claws are just cool."

"That too, Shiro-kun, that too. I keep a gun in my subspace, so that's really all the same difference. Easier to swap clips for different loads anyway."

"Can you turn into a car?" Nero asked.

"I mass 68 kilos, does that answer your question?"

"I don't know, Mith, I could see you as one of those little clown cars."

Mith scowled at him without any real malice. Nero joked around as much in real life as he did on the forums. "Your human form _is_ your alt form, unless you save it off to external memory and load a different transscan."

Elita made a little noise of surprise. "You do that?"

"Why not, the first thing I did was make a whole lot of backups of my transscan file and store them in safe places. By the way, is there a reason not to use a transscan file that someone else made?"

Que said, "Yes, and no. You can, but you have to copy your protoform's base stats into the new file and that absolutely has to be correct. Otherwise the mass handling routines will start throwing errors, or you might transform anyway and injure yourself. You won't have as much variance in mass as we do, but your tolerances are a lot closer than ours too."

Elita said, "That's a new idea for us. Changing an adult alt is not something that we do lightly. Our alts are a part of our identity."

Mith nodded. "I don't really feel that way. I'm who I am no matter what form I'm using. Not that I'd want to _lose_ my human form, but I don't mind storing it for a while to use a different one. Do you think that's just a Pretender mindset?"

"Very likely," Elita said. "It would make sense for Pretenders not to get attached to alts that they might need to change with every new mission. But you aren't just a Pretender. You have a human mindset also, and humans are curious and innovative above all else. We're not as good at that."

Nero said, "Yes, ma'am, but we got a saying about that. Curiosity killed the cat."

Mith plugged his new deck into a console and finished the proverb. "But satisfaction brought him back."

The NEST pilots, Majors Marie Forster and Brenda Morgan, came up the ramp. Mith saw them checking him out and returned the favor.

"When can we take her up?"

Elita smiled. Pilots with a new plane were like sparklings with a new toy. "As soon as I make sure I've cleared out all their remote piloting software. A few hours."

"Thank you, Prime. Oh, hi, Que, I didn't see you back there. How does it look compared to _Excelion_?"

"The destroyers were designed to take these ships on," he replied. "But I also see indications that their pilots haven't been using the craft to their full capability. You'll have to take it up to see what you can do with it."

The two shared a grin. They'd see what it could do all right.

A few hours later Elita was fairly sure that she had disabled everything that might cause trouble for anyone trying to fly the cruiser. She had also given her a new IFF designation to prevent them getting shot down by accident. Forster and Morgan had spent the time familiarizing themselves with the cockpit. Their stations were identical to the human stations aboard the _Xan II _and _Excelion._It was the bots who had to familiarize themselves with a different layout.

Wheeljack finished repairing the shield generator. "Are we going to take her up tonight or wait until tomorrow?"

Everyone was all for taking it up that night. Elita figured they had might as well. She told Optimus what they were doing, then the pilots radioed the tower to let the Navy know.

Wayfarer and Mirage came down to fly on their wing. Mith asked Que, "What can we do?"

"Systems monitoring. Ironhide pounded this thing. I fixed everything I could find, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems that might not show up until she's in the air."

Frida was scared. When she had come over, she had thought she'd be working out of the Admin building or a forward command, not on a spaceship. She strapped into her seat and tried not to let anyone see her hands shaking. Her job was to monitor the cooling system.

Mith strapped in next to her, he would be monitoring the fuel system. As far as his tasks were concerned, competent was an understatement. The rest of it, he was winging it. But that had become the story of his life and he loved every minute of it. Unicron had meant the attack on his town as an act of terrorism, but as a result he was living the life he had only dreamed about for years.

Nero had honed his skills in the Army, and then settled down to a boring job as a university professor. When Mith had told him he was needed, he hadn't hesitated to quit his job and get on a plane. He found himself easily slipping back into a military mindset, and he was emerging as the group's leader. That was a lot like herding cats. He would be monitoring the ship's handling, trying to catch any problems before they became an issue that the pilots had to deal with. The artificial gravity also ran through his board. In case of high-g maneuvers, it's inertia damping properties would save the human crew an unpleasant ride.

Shiro was the quintessential cyber-warrior, one of the first of a new breed living by an ancient code. Whether his weapon was a sword or a deck, his duty to fight evil and defend the innocent was the same. He gave Frida a reassuring smile then turned to his board. He had weapons and shields.

Maggie had the sensor station and Glen had communications.

Que and Elita were monitoring everything, giving the green crew a chance to learn their jobs but overseeing everything with experienced optics.

Forster and Morgan began a crisply professional preflight check. Forster was first seat, but only because she had a few months' seniority over her RIO and best friend. There was a natural friendly rivalry between the pilots, who were mostly Air Force with a few Navy and Marine aviators, and the ground-pounders who had one out of the Rangers, the SEALS and the SAS for the most part, and Forster had become an excellent shot and hand-to-hand combatant simply not to give any ground to the grunts. She was fair-skinned with ebony hair that she wore as long as pilot safety regulations allowed.

Morgan was a tall blonde, just as competitive as Forster but completely focused on her flying. She was a natural combat pilot and a hell of a shot. She was one of the few human pilots to ever survive a dogfight with a seeker, over Chicago, and the only one known to have ever shot one down. She freely admitted that luck had as much to do with it as skill, but that could be true in any dogfight. Will had realized a lot of it had been the ability to assess how seekers fought and adapt quickly enough to the new battlefield to respond appropriately with an outclassed plane. He had grabbed her up for NEST before the dust settled.

Ten years later, they were the senior NEST pilots and the obvious choices to fly their prize ship.

Morgan asked, "Well, what's her name?"

They all thought about it. _"Paladin,"_ Mith suggested. Whatever she'd been before, now her job was to battle evil.

Everyone agreed.

With the preflight out of the way, they slowly powered up the engines to make sure Wheeljack's repairs would hold. Then they flew out over the lagoon, away from the port, where all they could hit was water. Finally, the engineer gave them the go-ahead to open it up. Forster checked to see that everyone was strapped in or locked down, then she started really putting the ship through her paces. They ended the test with a mock dogfight with Wayfarer. Morgan split off the rear guns to Nero's console to see how he would handle them.

Wayfarer tried to close to hand-to-hand combat. Forster let her get close, then maxed the shields to protect her own plane and rolled, barely kissing Wayfarer with a wingtip. It was enough to send her tumbling, not enough to smack her into the unforgiving water.

After that, the fight was on. They traded radar locks and wild aerobatics until Elita took pity on people who were getting airsick and called a halt for the night. Everything that flew from the island or the port had got in the air to watch, since they all expected to be flying against these things.

The next day, Shiro, Frida, Nero, Maggie and Glen had a private meeting to discuss their decision to become Pretenders. Maggie and Glen had both decided air combat was not for them, they were better off in Ops than trying to do their jobs while puking their socks up. The rest persuaded them not to go through metamorphosis now, because they wanted children. The others all decided to go ahead with it, and so did Forster and Morgan, with Will's blessing. Ten years had made a difference that the two pilots felt they couldn't afford.

Under Ratchet's care, their metamorphosis was completely uneventful. Not so the first few hours after they left his care. They wanted to find out what they could do. They were quickly kicked out of the residence and sent up to the proving grounds for that, before they tore the commons up. Jumping from one bot-sized couch to another to see how far they could jump wasn't particularly approved of by Chromia.

They had a couple of weeks to train, whether it was in the nuances of Cybertronian programming or learning to fight. They had no shortage of sparring partners. All the teams were hard at work getting rid of the cobwebs from a few years of relative peace and quiet, and Brakedown was putting his new team through their paces. Former 'Cons all, they had a different style working as a team than the Autobot teams did. Without Megatron and Starscream's craziness to deal with, it was highly effective. For the first time they were able to freely trade techniques back and forth, strengthening everyone.

Several more NEST troops volunteered for metamorphosis, after seeing the two pilots and especially the computer specialists training, and talking it over with their families. First was the man whose wife and child had been transformed, he had been talking about it with Will already. But he was quickly followed by seventeen more. That gave the NEST troops just that much more of an edge.

Evenings, they hung out in the commons, and it had the same atmosphere as it had in the couple of years between Egypt and Chicago. With kids and other civilians around, it had been a place where they were all family. Now they were once again a rowdy warband. There was a hard edge to the laughter, a sense of living for the moment in whatever they were doing for entertainment. Practical jokes and small clashes were frequent, just letting off tension, though the leadership were careful not to let it get out of hand.

One evening, Will came into the commons from Ops and yelled for everyone to listen up. "The balloon just went up! An invasion force of twenty to thirty ships just decloaked inside lunar orbit. The EDF fleet is en route, but they'll make planetfall before most of them can get here. We expect the mass drivers to cut down on their numbers but we are still facing a sizable invasion fleet. We do not know where Unicron is at this time but it's almost certain he's waiting to come in himself until his fleet can soften us up. Let's make sure we give the fraggers a party to write home about!"

The roar from the NEST troops and quite a few bots threatened to take the roof off the commons. Unicron's Pitspawn had come looking for trouble and they had found plenty.

People ran to their stations, expecting another attack on Diego Garcia as a matter of course. After the last one, though, it didn't happen. The East Coast of the United States and Europe were targeted.

Prime sent Breakdown's team to Europe, since Sandy could carry them through the Suez Canal as quickly as the planes could get everyone else to the States. They quickly boarded the three Cybertronian ships.

Optimus looked around the _Xan II, _transporting Red Team and Ratchet's medical team. Blue Team, including Hound, and NEST were aboard the much larger _Excelion _with Black Team. Ops caught a ride with the Cyber-warriors aboard _Paladin. _

Diego Garcia went to war.

_(A.N. I just saw that I have over 10,000 hits on this story! Thank you so much! It's overwhelming to me how many people have read this. The next story arc covers the war with Unicron, __and while I have most of it written, it may take me more time than usual to get the chapters ready to publish. A _lot _is going on in real life right now, so please forgive me for the delay. /A.N.)_


	55. Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 1

(Chapter 40—Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 1)

(Disclaimers in Part 1)

(2021—Virginia and Washington DC, USA)

A refugee camp was a refugee camp. No matter how hard the sailors and their families stationed at NS Norfolk tried to make them feel welcome—and they tried hard—it still wasn't home. Toby and Shawna had got mistakenly listed as a married couple, so they had ended up with one small room in the human quarters. They had decided not to complain, because it was a better place to keep their dog and cat. At night, Shawna usually stayed next door with Sara and Anna. It was embarrassing to have to explain things to people who didn't understand the techno-organics' situation of having one foot in the Cybertronian world and the other firmly in their birth culture. They would never be completely one thing or the other. They were sparkbonded. They couldn't just move in together like any Cybertronian couple would have because it was against their religion. They couldn't get married because they weren't old enough. It was easiest to just tell humans that they were engaged, but that only scratched the surface.

Sara Lennox had been a godsend. She understood Cybertronian culture as only a human who was part of a Cybertronian cohort could. She and Elita Prime had sort of appointed themselves the young couple's godmothers, giving them the unconditional love that their birth parents couldn't and helping them adjust to their new life.

They had been happy on Diego Garcia, for the first time in their lives. They still spoke to their birth mothers, but the icy walls blocking off what should have been their paternal bonds hurt too much to contemplate. Instead they had concentrated on becoming part of the younglings' cohort, the Tribe.

The evacuation had thrown everything into a tailspin. Their teacher, Mrs. Graham, had taken her autistic daughter Sherry back to England to stay with her parents rather than subject her to the confusion of the camp. Sara was substituting, which was nice, but it meant she was busy 24/7. Shawna and and Toby made a special effort not to complain about anything.

Anna and Shaker were working out to be the co-captains of their little team. They kept their time outside school very regimented and full. They went to the mess together and ate together, the bots bringing their energon ration with them. Then they went to a large vacant lot over which they had claimed squatter's rights for martial arts practice and sparring. Hot Rod, Blue Streak and Kylie joined them for that. They weren't masters, but they were more advanced students who could help them with their studies when Ironhide and Will didn't have time. After that they went to class, back at the barracks. Sara then took them to the firing range for an hour. After that they did homework, then either Sara or Anna would have some activity organized until lights out to help keep them from missing evenings in the commons with their families so much. The only days that changed were Saturdays and Sundays.

On Saturday they'd had an activity every week. Yesterday they had been challenged to a paintball competition by some Marines, and that had been a lot of fun for everyone. The Marines had lost the first round because they had been going easy on a bunch of kids, but after that the gloves came off. Sara had mostly sat it out, claiming divided loyalties, but then for the last round she had teamed up with Hot Rod, Blue and Kylie, and the Marines' Lieutenant, to take on the Marines and the Tribe. That had been a wild run-and-gun, until Sara got into a good sniper's nest and started picking off idiots and Hot Rod dropped from a rooftop into the middle of them.

Anna shinnied up a drainpipe to get up to her mom and splatted the back of her helmet with a paintball. Then she had claimed the sniper's nest and the paintball rifle, to turn the tables. The big kids won only because Kylie grabbed the flag and ran and hid, and time ran out before anyone found her. Everything went well until Sara got a look at the drainpipe and yelled that Annie could have broken her neck. Smarting back that she had run with scissors and lived got her a smack on the rear end. Then the Marines treated them to an evening out at an IMAX movie. They could all go, because the theater was big enough for the bots after the maintenance guys took the back row of seats out temporarily.

Sunday mornings were free time. Shawna and Toby went to church, and Kylie and Anna went with them to keep them company even though they weren't really religious. It helped that the base chapel was non-denominational.

They were just getting back to the barracks when the sirens sounded and the first explosions sounded from the harbor.

An enemy cruiser flew over, targeting people on the street just like the 'Cons had done in Chicago. Without even stopping to think, the four kids grabbed the nearest people and steered them to shelter then went back for more.

Anna screamed as a ship in the harbor blew up, but then the rail guns opened fire and the cruisers started falling. The Tomahawks weren't far behind.

The surviving cruisers dropped their bots. The four young people decided to try to make it back to the barracks. Kylie and Anna took rifles from two dead Marines, stopping only long enough to pay quick respects before they ran.

A huge mech cut them off. They skidded into an alley and took cover in a doorway. He got a face full of bullets when he looked down the alley. They ran for their lives without ever knowing if they'd blinded him in both optics.

Kylie led them into a warehouse where some scared young sailors had taken cover. Most of them were unarmed, but a couple who weren't saw Shawna in robot form and almost shot them all. Anna grabbed a piece of broken glass and sliced her arm, showing them the blood. "We're the Diego Garcia refugees, they're with us!"

Toby explained, "We were coming back from church when they attacked. We're trying to get back to our barracks, but there was this ginormous Pitspawn! We just ran!"

Kylie snapped off a shot, dropping a four-legged Acolyte with a mouthful of metal fangs. "We can't stay here! They're coming every which way!"

The sailors said, "Out the front and across between those buildings. We need to find an officer and form up with some unit."

"Where's _your_ unit?"

"You're looking at it! Our quarters got hit!"

They burst out of the warehouse and ran for the alley. There was a shot and Anna got hit by something and she saw that it was a skull. The sailor who had been running beside her was dead just like that. There wasn't time to do anything except get to cover before she was next.

A huge black shadow blotted out the sun, and then there was a deafening transformation and a horrible rending of metal. Anna looked up to see Stormracer ripping the cruiser and the Acolytes inside to pieces with her claws. She left the wreckage blazing in the street, jumped into the air and transformed, then shot down two more in rapid succession. Anna spotted Corona, then TC. Some kind of fighter planes that she didn't recognize were weaving around the seekers, firing their own missiles, sometimes at Pitspawn on the ground.

They kept going. The kids split off from the sailors two blocks from their barracks and got home.

Sara had got everybody together in the bots' barracks. She screamed Anna's name and hugged her so hard she couldn't breathe. Star and Kylie's brothers were there too. Somebody had brought the cat and the dog.

A loud explosion shook the building, and a few minutes later a big seeker—TC this time—roared overhead.

One of the neutrals, Kinetica, said, "That looks like all the enemy ships but there are bound to be Pitspawn all over the place."

"There are, there's this one huge one. At least one we saw. He shot a sailor who was running right beside me and h-his skull hit me."

"We're gettin' the hell out of Dodge. Kinetica, any of the rest of you who doesn't have a plain, ordinary alt, go find one. For the love of God keep your heads down. Then hurry back here. The rest of you, grab your stuff. I want us ready to roll out in ten minutes!"

"Mom, we took these rifles from some dead Marines. We can't just steal them."

"Trust me, if you're using them to shoot at Pitspawn, they don't mind you borrowing them. When this is all over we'll make sure we get them to the right people."

The bots stayed among the buildings until they found a parking lot. One of the larger ones, Long Haul, scanned a white delivery truck so he could transport Firecracker and the Top Gun twins. The others picked Chevys, Fords and one Dodge truck that was Shaker. There weren't enough bots to carry all the people in passenger space. John, Toby and Shawna got in Shaker's cargo bed. Anna and Sara rode with Star. All the mothers had other kids besides their own.

They had trouble at the gate, the guards didn't want to let them out. Sara flipped out her ID. "Right now, my only job is keeping the NEST dependents out of harm's way. Don't make me kick your asses to carry out my duty."

They decided not to argue.

The roads out of Norfolk were jammed with people trying to escape the fighting. They figured they were safest hidden in the crowd. That night they ended up in church yard where the church ladies were feeding the refugees soup and sandwiches.

Anna whispered, "Starry, tell everybot to pick different parking spots around the lot so we can keep an eye on the whole place."

Danny Witwicky tugged on Sara's pants leg. "There's a bad lady here. We should go."

"We are. We're just going to get a sandwich and go to the bathroom and then leave."

He started crying. Sara picked him up. "Who is this bad lady, sweetie?"

"I don't know her, but she went over there."

Sara took Danny over to Kylie. "Some woman scared Danny. I'm going to check it out."

Star said, "Get in, we'll all three go."

"OK."

Star cruised the lot, to all appearances Sara was looking for a parking spot but their attention was on every woman they saw.

Star suddenly stiffened under them. "That's the one, she's a Pretender. Her energon damper must have something wrong with it, because I can smell her."

"Why is a spy here?" Annie asked.

Sara said, "If these refugees make camp here, the Acolytes could scoop up a whole shipload in no time. We need to stop her and get these people on the road."

Star replied, "Get out, then I'll draw her fire and you take care of her. I don't want to shoot back toward the church, there are too many people."

"OK. Annie, go back closer to the alley, don't let her get out that way."

"Yes, Mom."

Star transformed, getting the Pretender's attention as well as everyone else in the crowded parking lot. The Pretender turned to run. Sara yelled, "Stop right there!"

Instead, she transformed and shot at Sara. Red hot pain lanced her leg, but Sara pulled her combat knife and jumped on the Pretender, knocking her down and stabbing her several times.

Something dropped out of her hand, it was a couple of SD cards. Pretenders commonly used them to transfer information that they didn't want to put on the Internet. They must have been overjoyed to land here and find out how much human technology was based on Megatron and therefore compatible with them!

Anna jammed something on her leg and belatedly Sara realized, oh, yeah, she'd been shot.

Danny screamed, "They're coming, we need to leave!"

Sara said, "If she was scouting out places to find refugees, then that's what's probably on these cards. Hot Rod!"

"Right here, Sara."

Blue transformed, too, yelling at some guys, "Put your guns down, we're Autobots!"

Sara told him, "You take this caravan north to DC. She probably sent our ID up the line before I took her out, so we can't stay with you. We'll lead them off into the mountains and circle around. Get the civvies somewhere safe then take our people to the DC headquarters. We'll meet you there."

Hot Rod nodded. "We'll do that. Be careful."

Sara tied a heavy field dressing on her leg, then Star gently lifted her, transforming around her. Anna got in the driver's side and the three got out of there.

Hot Rod yelled, "Everyone listen up, we can't stay here! We think that Pretender called in reinforcements! We're heading north. I'll take point and scout ahead. Kinetica, you lead off, keep them together and give me a couple kilometers lead time. If I find any trouble, you don't need to run right into the middle of it. Long Haul, you bring up the rear and let me know if anybody drops out of line. The rest of you space out in the line. Blue, get somewhere in the middle and keep an optic on everybody. People, if we stay together and keep moving we'll make it through, we haven't got that far to go! Who knows the roads between here and DC the best?"

That turned out to be a couple of delivery drivers. Hot Rod gave them a commlink and put them right behind Kinetica.

With the addition of three cars full of people from the church, they headed north.

*-T-F-Rising*

Star went west, up into the mountains. It wasn't long until Star picked up pursuit. "Sara, there are thirty of them back there!"

"Just all in a mob? How far back?"

"About twenty kilometers."

"Step on it, then."

She didn't have to tell Star twice. The young femme didn't want anything to do with them. But after going airborne over a dip and landing hard, she felt something hot and wet and realized what it was. "Sara, your leg is bleeding again! Annie, fix her bandage!"

They tried to do that, but Annie screamed a little when blood sprayed on her. She immediately squished another bandage down on top of the first one. Sara tied it down as tight as she could, cursing in every language she knew to keep from screaming. "Mom, what do we do?"

They were pulled over in a scenic overlook at the top of a mountain. Sara got her rifle and limped over to a good position overlooking the road winding up the mountain. She tucked the memory chips safely in Annie's pocket. "I'm slowing you down, and I'll probably bust this open again and bleed out if I try to go with you. Getting this through to your dad is up to you two now. I'll make sure there aren't as many of them after you."

Anna's eyes widened in horror as she realized what Sara meant to do. "Mom, I can't just leave you here!"

"Yes, you can, Annie. This is my choice. We don't get to decide when, but sometimes we get to decide how, and I'm making my decision. You get that information through, and let me do what I was put on this Earth to do. Tell your father I love him, and I'll see you further on up the road."

Annie nodded and hugged her hard, then Starry knelt and hugged her too. Starry gave her all the explosive rounds she had. She could depend on her ion cannon if she had to fight but their job wasn't going to be fighting. "Aunt Sara, you've been like another Mom to me. I love you so much."

"I love you too, Starry. Get through to Will with that. Save all those people. That's what matters now. Transform and roll out!"

Both of them snapped to attention and saluted, then they took off as fast as Starry could go.

Sara found a good spot where she had places to rest her leg and her rifle. She wished she could call Will, to hear his voice one more time and tell him she loved him, but using her commlink would be too much of a risk of giving away her position too soon. She wished she could have convinced Anna and Star not to feel guilty. Fourteen was too young for them to carry the weight of her death, and she well understood the determination to leave no one behind.

She hoped they had believed what she told them about making her own choices, because she didn't regret it. There were so many milestones she was going to miss, the grandkids she never would meet. She had wanted to get old with her husband, and die doing something magnificently crazy when they were about a hundred years old. That didn't seem to be in the cards. But none of that mattered beside giving the girls the best chance she could.

She saw them coming and sighted in on the leader. When he reached a sharp curve, she took her shot. Three other Acolytes crashed into his dying body, and went over the side of the cliff. Because they were so far away, the report was lost in the sound of the explosions when they landed in the rocks below. She was able to repeat that twice before the Pitspawn even realized a sniper was up there. After that, they still had to rush her position, and she kept firing all that time. By the time one of them got to her and shot her again, fourteen of his friends were never leaving that mountain.

For a minute, everything stopped hurting and she thought she was dead, but she could still see the bots going by. She just adopted a fixed stare and didn't move, taking a breath only when one of them wasn't nearby.

After the last one went over the ridge, she tried to get her T-shirt over her head and let out a string of profanities as pain lanced through her right side. She pulled her combat knife left-handed and used it to cut the shirt up the front then got one arm at a time out. If she could stop herself from bleeding to death, she might just survive.

The bullet wound itself had been made by a hell of a big round. She could see a pieces of a rib in a deep bloody furrow. She shook up her can of instant bandage, then soaked up all the blood she could with the shirt. She turned the air blue again when she sprayed the wound, it burned like she'd stuck a hot iron on it. There was still about two thirds of a can left after she had first treated her leg in the church yard, and she used all of it that remained. She hoped it would get down in there deep enough to stop any internal bleeding, that had been the whole point of getting the blood out of the way. She knew the trouble with a big round wasn't just the wound itself, you also had to worry about the damage caused by the impact carrying through soft tissues. There was nothing she could do about that, though.

Sara recovered her rifle, reloaded and scooted as gingerly as she could into a warm sunny spot between a couple of rocks, where she would be sheltered from the wind when the sun went down. She took a few little sips of water, but without knowing just what was ripped up in there she decided not to drink any more than that for a couple of hours.

Sara had been putting off throwing a fit until she did everything survival-oriented that she needed to do. But now there really wasn't much left to throw a fit about. She was still breathing, which was pretty incredible considering, and it really didn't hurt too bad as long as she kept still. She suspected eventually it was going to hurt like a bitch, but that was then. She decided the time was better spent praying for Anna and Star than crying over her own situation. They were the ones who still had a bunch of Pitspawn on their six.

(Continued in Part 2)


	56. Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 2

(Chapter 40—Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 2)

*-T-F-Rising*

Star turned off the main road onto the Parkway, because they figured the Acolytes might not even know about it. They hoped that would get them closer to DC where they could join up with _any_ friendly unit. Twice, though, they ran across a stray enemy who was able to report their position before they killed him—the last one Star ended up killing with her sword. Hurt and leaking energon, she took cover under a bridge while Anna clamped off the leak. "Star, can you still move with that shut off?"

"Yes, but not as fast. When I'm in alt form, the motivator that line goes to powers my front left wheel. I can only power my back wheels like this."

"OK, we gotta get off this road 'cause they know we're here. Where are we?"

Starry projected a hologram with a map. "There's this bridge."

"OK, what if we get clear off the road and follow this stream down to 522? From there we won't be more than an hour or two from Washington."

"There's a lot of fighting down in there, but we're just as likely to find some of our guys as some of theirs. Let's do it!"

They started the hard climb down to the highway. It wasn't anywhere nearly as easy as it looked on the map, and Star was hampered by the lack of a motivator in her left arm. They were afraid to stop, even to rest a little while, in case they had been followed. A few times Star climbed down twenty foot drops, then Anna jumped down into her servos. Sometimes Star was able to lower her down, others she just ended up ungracefully sliding down her friend's body. But they both got down in one piece.

They got onto US 522, finally, and Star was able to make a top speed of about seventy miles an hour when the road allowed—usually it didn't. There had been a lot of fighting. There were wrecked vehicles, both civilian and military. They lost count of how many bodies they saw, many of them burned beyond recognition or nothing left but bones and clothing. They found a lot of offlined Pitspawn, though. Some of them looked like Ironhide might have been at them, which reassured both of them greatly. But in one of the great ironies of war, if Blue Team had passed this way, they weren't here now.

Finally they caught up with a broken-down APC and the Marines who had been riding in it. Anna argued with the sergeant about having to get back to her father, he thought she was just a kid acting stupid. Then Starry lost her patience. "Look, you moron, _I_ can't call for a pickup because the fraggin' Pitspawn might get my location! Anna's mom _died_ to get us here! I'm limping along with a busted motivator and Primus only knows what's between us and the Pit-be-damn beltway! Do I look like this is some fraggin' aftheaded _prank? _Now, you think about what's going to happen if we have to get into DC on our own and her father gets his hands on you! Or better yet you think about what'll happen if we only get _halfway _there, and _my_ father catches the fraggin' idiot who wouldn't make a damn radio call for us!"

He looked at them, tired and bruised and stained with blood and energon, Anna with the same look in her eyes as his boys and girls. If Star was afraid her radio would attract attention to her _specifically_, when there were dozens of Autobots involved in the fighting, there was a reason for that. "OK, the only way I can think of to get you out of here without drawing attention to you is call for a medevac. Those calls are going off all the time, and the Pitspawn aren't bothering with them, unless it's just an opportunity shot. But, listen to me, when they come to get you they can't respond to a wounded soldier. Do you _swear _to me this is important enough for that?"

Anna said, "If it wasn't, Sarge, we'd just stay and fight with _you_. There really is a reason we _have_ to get to my dad."

One of the Marines pointed out, "Looks like the bot does need a medevac. Her arm's all fucked up."

"Make the call. You—get down here where I can see that. How much of that energon is yours and how much is the other guy's?"

"It's all mine. He cut the line in two. Anna already clamped it off."

"I wish I had some to give you."

"I had a spare cube in my subspace. I'm OK."

They sat down to wait for the chopper, which wasn't too long getting there. The trouble was, what showed up was small four-seat news chopper, which was making medevac flights while filming what they could. There was no way they could take Star.

"Anna, you _have_ to go. I'll stay with these guys and we'll look out for each other."

"I—I know. Starry—"

Nightstar knelt down and they held each other. "I'll be careful. Go." Anna went.

The sergeant asked suspiciously, "How old are you kids exactly?"

"Fourteen," Star answered him shortly.

There were shouts and oaths from the Marines, who had taken them for their age of nineteen or twenty.

What difference five or six years made, Star didn't know. She quoted Optimus, "'Destiny rarely calls at a moment of our choosing.' Trust me, I'd rather be safe in my own commons than here pestering you. We had trouble on our afts, and eventually they'll figure out which way we went. Staying here probably isn't a great idea."

"We're going to try to catch up with the rest of our outfit, if we can find anything that runs, or raise whatever hell we can on our own. I guess you're better off with us than alone, kid."

"I could say the same for you. I may be young and I may be wounded, but still I earned my right as an Autobot warrior today. Such as it is, my sword is yours, Sergeant O'Reilly."

"Then what are we standing around here for? Get everything together that we can carry and move out."

With the threat of the Pitspawn that had been after the girls catching up to them, they did so. There was a gun on the APC that chambered the same explosive rounds as the ones she had given Sara. Star unknowingly began the Legend of Sara Lennox by telling the Marines what she had done to save them as she reloaded. "There were thirty of them when we left Norfolk. The next time I counted, there were sixteen left."

"Oorah," one of the Marines said. And that about said it all. Along with the crushing sorrow, Star began to feel a spark-deep pride.

She transformed, she'd rather not make a big tall target of herself moving through the countryside. The Marines headed toward their objective. She had trained with NEST enough to just fall into formation with them. She gave O'Reilly a short rundown on her abilities, then turned her full attention to her surroundings. She was no longer making a desperate run for safety with Anna and the precious data chips. Now they were out looking for trouble.

It wasn't long until they found some, in the form of three Acolytes at a small crossroads town with a few houses, a church and a little gas station-convenience store. They used the time-honored tactic of shooting for the optics, but these guys decided to fight in the dark. One of them flung a wrecked car at where he could hear most of the shots coming from, and crushed a couple of Marines.

Some Virginia boys and girls started taking potshots with hunting rifles and shotguns from the houses. That helped divide the Pitspawn's fire because they could only hear the shooting, they couldn't tell who exactly had the dangerous explosive rounds. Besides that, a good shot _could_ use a big hunting round to good effect if he knew where to aim, or just got lucky.

Star saw one of them standing next to a propane tank and put an explosive round in it. The explosion didn't stop him, but it did create confusion and damaged his armor. Her ion cannon was admittedly a small one, located on her injured arm, and it needed to cool down after every shot—but right then she was happy she had it. That was one down. The other two soon followed, to concentrated fire from the Marines.

One of the guys who had been hit by the thrown car was beyond help. The other one had a badly broken leg. He stayed behind with the townspeople, who gave them a couple of pickup trucks. The rest had nothing worse than a few grazes.

Half an hour later they rejoined what was left of the rest of the Marines' unit outside Manassas. A mechanic there knew enough to replace her cut fuel line. The captain then sent Star on to the city with a column of civilians fleeing the fighting.

"Where do you want me to take them?"

"Nobody knows, just as far away from the front lines as you can keep them moving! You might run into Guardies or local first responders who can tell you better. Stay out of Anacostia. I heard there's some heavy fighting there."

"Yes, Captain." She went over to the scared group of refugees, who crowded around her like she actually knew what in the Pit she was doing. She glanced up at the sky with a plea for help, then asked with confidence she didn't feel, "Does anybody need gas? If you do, go get a can from the motor pool! We're headed north into the city. Once we get there, we'll find somebody to tell us where you're supposed to be."

A little girl asked, "What if nobody knows? My daddy says these people couldn't find their butt in the dark with both hands!"

Star saw a big fat guy turn beet red, while the other refugees seized on something to laugh at in a day that wasn't offering much in the way of comic relief. She couldn't help laughing a little bit herself. "Then we'll just find you someplace to sleep tonight. The main thing is getting you away from here."

She lined the vehicles up, the slowest first so nobody would get left behind, and brought up the rear herself since she figured bad news was likely to come from that direction. She wished she had somebody to scout ahead, but there was nothing else that she could do.

Star heard a roar and looked up. A huge mixed flight of seekers and US Air Force fighters went over. She first recognized Stormracer and Thundercracker, and as they came closer there were Corona and Wayfarer on their wings. The Air Force planes looked kind of seeker-like, but they weren't. It looked like a pack of wolves on the hunt. She shouted and waved. Corona saw her and transformed in midair to wave back, then smoothly transformed back to her alt and returned easily to her place. That drew a loud cheer from the Marines.

Anna got the column of refugees on the road. They were losing daylight. It would be too dangerous to try to move them after dark.

They were behind their own lines now, so the road was clear. She kept most of her attention on her passive sensors. Every few klicks she checked the column, making sure nobody was getting bunched up too close to anybody else or anything like that.

*-T-F-Rising*

Anna ducked low and ran under the helicopter blades to a group of NEST troops. Epps was there, and for a moment she just let him hold her. "Where's Dad?"

"He's got his command post set up at the HQ."

"He's in the command post? That's good, but where's General Morshower?"

"Nobody knows. He lives down in Annandale and there was some trouble down there. Knowing him, he's in the middle of it. Where are your mom and Starry?"

At the look on her face, he just held her tight again. "Starry was OK the last I saw, with some Marines. I came in a really small helicopter. She couldn't fit so she stayed with those Marines. Has Hot Rod been here?"

"Yeah, they brought the Tribe here then they went back out again on a supply run. Let's get you to your Dad."

"Oh, God, I have to tell him—" She said, suddenly stricken with grief as painful as her own loss.

Epps said, "I'll be right here with you as long as you need me to, Annie."

They walked up to the HQ. Later Anna figured they must have been challenged by guards half a dozen times. But nothing really registered until she saw her dad in Ops. He was on the radio. She saw Mearing and Simmons as well, but she walked straight to her dad. Crying, she gave him the chips and told him everything that had happened.

He passed them to Mearing and Anna watched him lock the grief away behind a wall the same way she had to get here. She held him tight for a few moments. For a moment, he looked at her with so much pride it took her breath away. "Well done, Anna Warrior."

She nodded once, sharply, not trusting herself to speak. Then he was needed, and she could see she was in the way. She gripped his hands for a moment, then looked around to see where she could be useful.

Jolt had a triage area set up in the back lot. She went out there to see if she could help. Across the river, there were fires burning in the city.

*-T-F-Rising*

Will watched Anna leave. She was no longer the little girl who had hugged him goodbye this morning. He took the radio that somebody handed him. "NEST Actual."

"Delta Golf Actual, NEST Actual. I have a large unidentified sensor shadow north of Norfolk. I'm on it." Optimus' voice, using the hybrid radio code that the combined units had standardized over the years.

"Affirmative, Delta Golf Actual. Good hunting." Lennox replied.

"Thank you, NEST Actual."

There was a sudden scream of ripping metal, and the whole building was rocked by a mighty impact. Everybody reflexively ducked and some people screamed. Will saw a big seeker—TC—lying half in the door, shot all to hell. People scrambled to try to help. TC watched in shocked surprise as these fleshies risked energon scalds or worse to save his life until the medic could get there. Will tuned it all out and forced himself to think about what he was doing. If anything else intruded, he would think about Sara, and he _could not _fall apart right now.

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus Prime flew over the dark Virginia lowlands. The fliers were mopping up the last of Unicron's air cover after what had been a fierce battle. But the ground units could move freely now.

There was no more sign of the sensor shadow. He had copied the data to Elita and they were convinced, if it was a sensor ghost it was a Pit-be-damned corporeal one. She met him on the ground near the docks.

Stacks of shipping containers stood fifty or sixty feet high as far as they could see. In the pitch dark with the electricity out, the place was a maze.

Optimus drew his sword, but kept it cold for now. Elita cloaked and climbed to the top of a stack of containers to get a look around.

A noise turned out to be three terrified dockworkers. He pointed back the way he'd come and that was all the encouragement they needed to run like Pit. He continued deeper into the labyrinth.

With her better vantage point, Elita was the first to spot their quarry, a big mech mostly hidden in the shadows of a stack of containers. Optimus circled around, intending to flank him.

Still cloaked and hidden by darkness, Elita perched on the edge of the containers, awaiting Optimus' signal to attack.

The purple and gray mech looked _right at her,_ and raised some large cannon. That wasn't enough warning to get completely out of the way, but she did manage to activate her force shield and throw herself to the side. The blast tore through her force shield like it wasn't even there and caught her left arm and leg. It sent her spinning a hundred yards to crash into a huge crane pylon. Everything went black.

Optimus ignited his sword and leapt at the purple mech with a roar. His sword took out the cannon, but the mech got in under his weapon and shoved a punch dagger into his side. Optimus twisted, catching the dagger between two armor plates and breaking it off in the injury.

The other mech threw him off and backstepped, pulling his own sword and shield out of subspace. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

Optimus started, recognizing a voice he never thought to hear again. "Megatron! You ought have stayed dead this time."

"Once I was Megatron, until Unicron came to me in the void to which you consigned me. Now I am Galvatron, and it is time for you to go into the void, _brother!" _With that, Galvatron shield-rushed him.

Optimus took the impact on his own shield and sidestepped, bringing his blade around. Galvatron twisted in midair and blocked with his sword, sheeting plasma fire off both weapons. The furious exchange of blows carried them into a stack of containers. One nearly hit Optimus but he threw it into Galvatron and followed with an attack that sundered his enemy's shield. Galvatron's clawed ped raked a slash down his thigh and caught on his knee, kicking him off balance.

That could have gone very badly, but a huge cargo net dropped onto Galvatron. The few seconds it took him to rip it free were all the grace Optimus needed to get his legs under him. He caught a glimpse of Elita up against the crane, badly hurt but alive, having just cut the net loose from the crane.

Optimus pressed the attack, forcing Galvatron to the defensive fight that Megatron had always hated. That at least hadn't changed. Galvatron leapt to flight, transforming to an Acolyte seeker form in midair. Optimus could only spare Elita a bare glance as he gave chase, but she sent a burst of angry encouragement in response.

She shut off the flow of energon to her shattered arm and leg, and watched them disappear into the dark sky. Galvatron twice dodged Optimus' ion cannon before the clouds swallowed them up. She had already shut off her pain sensors. She silenced a few other annoying alarms lest they distract Optimus at a bad time. It wasn't as if she needed a red light flashing on her HUD to inform her that her arm and leg were mangled beyond use. They were going to have to be replaced, not repaired.

Elita sat back against the crane. She wasn't getting far on her own, and she certainly wasn't making any distress calls until she had a better idea who might hear. All that remained was to wait, it was all up to Optimus now for both of them.

*-T-F-Rising*

Mearing glanced over where Jolt was working on a stoically silent Thundercracker, then called to Lennox. She had pulled a map from one of the chips. Several marked locations were areas that they knew had been raided. In the center another location was marked, but as far as she could determine there was nothing there but a farmer's field. "What assets have we got in that area?"

"Gold Team just arrived at LZ three, that's fifty miles from there." Lennox switched to Gold's frequency. "NEST actual, Gold Actual."

"Yes, NEST Actual," Hot Rod replied.

Will sent the coordinates and told them to find out what was there and report back.

Gold Team had just finished escorting a supply run to the LZ, as close to the front lines as they would have been allowed if this hadn't happened.

Kaela asked, "Where are you guys going?"

"Lennox sent us this location, he wants us to go see what's there."

"I'll ride along." If something there needed identified, she might be able to help.

"Sure." With their passengers aboard, Hot Rod and Bluestreak raced off into the night.

Half an hour later, the four of them lay in the weeds at the top of a hill watching several Pitspawn milling around a metal platform. Sitting on the ground next to it was what looked like a high-tech shipping container of some kind. There was a bright flash of light, and suddenly another such container was on the platform. The acolytes pulled it off and set it beside the other one.

Kaela said, "Holy crap, that's some kind of a space bridge!"

Kylie said, "No way. The one Sentinel had needed about a hundred of those big-ass pillars all over the planet."

"They're not trying to teleport a whole other fraggin' planet, now are they?"

"Well, no..."

"I think this is probably more like the jump points. That has to be where Sentinel got the idea for the space bridge in the first place."

Blue said urgently, "Everybody get down and shut up, quick!"

They did, when they realized why. An Acolyte cruiser cleared the hill just feet above them. The debris thrown up by its lifters blasted into them. Kylie grabbed hold of Hot Rod and Blue pinned Kaela down with his servo on her back, otherwise they might have been picked up themselves. They stayed still enough to go unnoticed as the cruiser set down by the space bridge.

About twenty people were loaded off the cruiser, and loaded at gunpoint into a container. They could hear the people in the container screaming in fear as the bots put the container on the platform and sent it off. The cruiser took off, undoubtedly to capture more humans.

Kaela said, "We need to kill those mechs and blow that up."

Hot Shot said, "If we do that the people they already bridged through will be stranded. We need to get them out first."

"How are we supposed to do that?"

"I don't know but I'm not just leaving them there to be slaves or sacrifices!"

Kaela said, "Then we got us some Pitspawn to kill." They all took aim. Blinding the enemy was always better than not.

After they took their shots, Hot Rod and Bluestreak rushed to melee. Even though the three enemy mechs were bigger and better armed, attacking from surprise gave Hot Rod's team the advantage. They quickly put their opposition down and studied the bridge controls.

(Continued in Part Three)


	57. Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 3

(Chapter 40—Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 3)

*-T-F-Rising*

Annie heard a familiar horn and looked up from the minerbot whose injured servo she had just finished cleaning of mud and debris. She sent the femme to wait where Jolt was finishing up with TC and ran for the lot.

Starry transformed and knelt in the gravel to hold Anna close. The femme and the girl exchanged accounts of everything that had happened since the news helicopter had taken off.

"Do you know anything about your parents or Firecracker?"

"Firecracker's OK. They're at a refugee camp just inside the beltway. Mom and Dad have their bonds damped. That means they're still under fire. They know Firecracker and I are OK, so that's something. Annie?"

"Mom's still out there."

Star nodded. "What can we do?"

"Go get her. But I can't just go, after everything that's happened I can't just disappear on Dad."

"He's never going to let you."

Annie said, "Yes, he will. Come on."

The two of them walked into what used to be the DC HQ's commons and now looked more like the White House war room. Will came over to hug them both.

Anna said, "We have to go get Mom."

"No, absolutely not."

Annabelle didn't cry or beg, she just looked at him with million-year-old eyes. "Dad. I left her behind. It's my job to bring her home."

Will Lennox realized two things. One, he had been informed, not asked permission. Two, if he refused her, she would never forgive him, but more importantly she would never forgive herself. The guilt would eat at her for the rest of her life and no amount of counseling could ever fix that. If he loved his daughter he had to get out of her way, even if it meant losing everything that mattered to him in one godforsaken night. He held her tight and felt her arms around him like steel bands. "Don't get killed, Annie. I can't lose you too."

She only held him tighter, if that was possible. That wasn't a promise she could make, not when death on a battlefield was often nothing more than random chance. "We'll look out for each other and we won't do anything stupid. I love you, Dad. Mom did too."

"Does," he corrected. "That doesn't end."

Anna nodded, then she and Star disappeared into the pre-dawn shadows.

Star paused by TC to bow her head. "Nightstar of Diego Garcia, Wingleader Thundercracker. I thank you for fighting on my behalf."

Scarlet optics unshuttered briefly. In all his vorns as a warrior, he'd never done anything to earn someone's thanks before. There was a fierce pride in having defended something worth keeping. The best of old Cybertron lived on in this young femme. He had seen the courage of its seekers in, of all places, the hearts of the tiny creatures of flesh and bone who had fought and died on his wing tonight. It was a lot to think about. "It was an honor, young warrior."

Anna went around to the medics and spoke briefly to one of them. The woman handed her something in a plastic bag, and hugged her. Star transformed, and as Anna climbed in, she saw what her friend had. It was a body bag. She took it and subspaced it.

"How do you think we should go? Do you think they're still searching Skyline Drive for us?" Anna asked.

"I doubt they're even still looking for us," Star replied. "Let's swing wide, there's a highway on the other side of Skyline Drive where I don't think there's even been any fighting."

Anna put on her helmet. "Let's go."

*-T-F-Rising*

Mikaela finished hacking the space bridge controls. "OK, there's a ten-second delay. That'll give us time to get in and close the container before we bridge."

Hot Rod said, "Primus only knows what's waiting on the other end, so get ready to come out shooting!" He and Blue set the container on the platform, then they and Kylie crowded in. Kaela hit the transport switch and dived in, Blue pulled the door closed and sealed it.

That was the wildest ride of their lives. The container spun around in directions that didn't even exist in their universe, then dropped them hard.

The Pitspawn who opened the container had Hot Rod's sword through his spark before he knew what hit him. They burst out of the container and Bluestreak gunned down another one.

A third grabbed the blue mech and tried to rip his arm off. Hot Rod jumped to his brother's defense, and the three mechs went down in a pile, punching and kicking. Kaela just walked up and shot the Pitspawn in the back of the neck.

Kylie opened holding cells and dozens of prisoners poured out.

Hot Rod took control of the situation. "We're going to get you home! Pack in there!"

Kaela had Bluestreak lift her halfway up the door and tied a rope to the latch. "When it stops, pull this! It'll probably take a bunch of you. Then close the container and send it back for the next load. There's a big black button. There's a ten second delay from the time you hit the button till it activates."

Hot Rod saw some bots coming and shot the door controls, locking them out. "Hurry up!"

The last load was away before the door started to give. Hot Rod waited to give the container time enough to get through, then brought his sword down on the bridge controls. No one was chasing after the refugees that way, but they were cut off about as far behind enemy lines as you could get.

The door gave way. All of them opened fire, killing the first mech through the door, and the second, who tripped over his body. The rest dived for cover.

Blue beckoned to a small opening—well, small for bots. Hot Rod ducked in without hesitation. Whatever it was, it beat this death trap. Kylie followed. Kaela quipped, "If this is a garbage chute, I'll kill you." Then she went through as well. Blue brought up the rear, guns trained on the entrance until the passage's twists and turns gave them cover.

Pursuit was delayed because none of the mechs after them could fit in the hole.

Kylie tripped and grabbed a pipe to catch herself. She jerked her hand back as if bitten. "What the fuckin' hell is that!" She gasped.

Kaela examined her hand, and found no injury.

Hot Rod said grimly, "It's got to be dark energon. This is Unicron."

Blue said, "Kaela? Are you the only one who can't sense that?"

"Dark, evil, yadda yadda? Sure. So what? He made his choice, I made mine. I'm glad I don't smell like that."

Blue said, "We could do some damage."

"Not here," Kaela said. "But if we follow these lines they'll eventually lead us to his main pumping station. And if they're right about dark energon being produced by his spark—"

Hot Rod said, "Then maybe we can do some real good."

All four of them nodded in agreement, carefully not thinking any further ahead than that. They set off following the energon lines.

They had several run-ins with Acolytes, but not as many as they feared. Unicron had committed most of his troops to the attack on Earth. Even so, the pervading darkness grew more harrowing the further they progressed into Unicron's depths. Their journey was shortened when they stumbled onto an automated materials lift that paralleled the energon line that they had been following, which was now thicker than Hot Rod was tall.

The materials lift consisted of a series of platforms traveling down a wide shaft. Apparently it was some sort of conveyor belt arrangement because across the way, they could see a chain of upside down platforms going in the opposite direction.

Blue clung to one of the massive cables supporting the platform as he looked over the side. The dark energon smell was getting stronger and the miasma of darkness seemed to slow his processor. Voices seemed to whisper in the distance, not quite loud enough to understand.

Hot Rod's hand closed over his shoulder. "Don't listen," he said. "It's all a big pack of lies anyway!"

He moved away from the edge. The air was getting hotter the further they went. By the time they neared the bottom of the shaft, it was so hot both humans were sweating, and they found it hard to breathe the foul air. The platform dumped them onto a wide, creaking conveyor belt. They jumped from the belt onto deck plates crusted with years of dark energon deposits.

Kaela said, "Huh. Nobody's been down here in a long time. Look how that crud's breaking up under your peds."

Hot Rod said, "It's all automated down here. He isn't taking the chance of letting his Acolytes this close to his spark."

"Must mean he's vulnerable down here," Kaela said. She reached in her bag. "Where do you think I can do the most damage with three blocks of C-4?"

"Spark chamber, no doubt."

Kylie said, "So where does he keep it?"

Blue snapped his guns out. "Did you hear that? Some kind of skittering noise?"

Hot Rod readied his own weapons. "I heard it."

Kylie screamed, pointing down a side tunnel. It was filled with what looked like skeletons with dark energon flames where their flesh belonged. They were undoubtedly humanoid skeletons, but not specifically human. They were heavier, with inch-long fangs, and many had tails.

Kaela saw similarities to Pretenders' Cybertronian forms. But there wasn't time to think, there were too many of them. All they could do was fire and keep firing.

The last few closed in. Hot Rod yelled when one grabbed his ankle, and its bony hand started to melt the metal. Kylie fired right into its face. Kaela smashed her rifle butt into one that grabbed her arm. She almost puked when chunks of burnt flesh ripped away with its hand.

Blue picked her and Kylie up and followed Hot Rod at a dead run. They went through a couple of doors and jammed them behind them.

Finally they came to a precipice. Far below, they could see the massive orb that was Unicron's spark, flaring and pulsing in a lake of dark energon. This huge circular vault was his actual spark chamber.

Kylie said, "There! That catwalk thing goes all the way down."

Kaela said, "Looks pretty rickety."

Hot Rod said, "We all knew this was a one-way trip."

"Pretty much. Yeah," Kaela agreed.

Blue said, "Lightest first. If it's going to give way, it'll be one of us that goes through."

Kylie said, "Let me go first, Kaela. You got the C-4. If I do fall through, you can still try something else."

Kaela nodded. The burn was mostly cauterized, a few spots seeped blood. It was mostly too deep to hurt. She shook up a can of instant bandage and sprayed the injury. You really were supposed to disinfect a burn first, but she didn't suppose that mattered. It wouldn't have to last that long.

She tossed the empty can over the side. It burst into flames when it hit the dark energon, flashing to nothing in a split second. Well, it would be quick, anyhow, if anyone did fall in.

Blue asked, "Think he knows we're here?"

Hot Rod looked out at the spark. "Oh, yeah. He knows."

"Not gonna just let us down there," Kylie said.

Kaela nodded thoughtfully. "Let's find out what he throws at us. Standing around here is useless."

Kylie turned and started down the catwalk without a backwards glance.

Kaela studied the wall as they walked. It was hard to see because there was so much dark energon residue crusted on the walls, but she eventually figured out the walls were metal plates joined by welds.

If she tried dropping a charge into the reservoir below them, it wouldn't catch fire. But if she used one charge to split a weld, it would flood out and cool, and create a massive cloud of vapor that could be ignited—and in turn, set fire to the lake itself. And that would burn hotter than jet fuel, as long as it had air. Plenty of time to cook Unicron.

Something detached from the ceiling, a winged drone with a barbed tail. It was sort of like a prehistoric Laserbeak. It wasn't bullet proof. But Unicron had a lot of them. They had to fight for every inch they gained.

A section of the catwalk cracked under Hot Rod. He took a running jump. The catwalk fell before he even landed on the next section. He lost his balance and would have fallen in after it if Blue hadn't pulled him to safety. Kaela shot a drone that got too close.

At the bottom of the catwalk, there was a landing almost at the level of the lake surface. An archway led who-knew-where. The fumes here were unbearable for the humans. Kaela pulled the neck of her tee-shirt up over her nose and mouth. The thin fabric did nothing to filter it out. She set one charge to rupture the tank, and two others with fifteen seconds more on the clock to ignite the fumes.

By then her eyes were burning as if she'd got into tear gas.

"Which way?"

Kaela said, "Can't see. What are the choices?"

"Stairs up and down."

Kylie said, "Hot Rod, I don't want to drown in that awful stuff."

"Up it is." They climbed, knowing they were only trading one death for another, but that was the choice they had.

*-T-F-Rising*

Back in the Virginia hills, the morning light was burning off the fog as Star and Anna found the mountain where Sara Lennox had made her stand. They found her just lying there with her rifle at her side.

Anna teared up. "She looks like she's just sleeping."

Star let out a screech of surprise. "Anna, she _is_. She still has an electrical signature—she's _alive!"_

Anna jumped out and they raced to Sara's side. Anna checked for a pulse, and screamed for joy when she found one. "Call for a medevac!"

Not long afterward, a Blackhawk landed to pick them up. Star was unceremoniously strapped down with a cargo net, the pilot didn't want her shifting weight around. Anna claimed a nearby seat and watched the medics fight to save her mother's life. They were hanging up bags of IV fluid and doing all kind of things, each more terrifying than the last. Their conversation was supposedly in English, but so much of it was medicalese that neither of them understood it.

The Blackhawk avoided pockets of continued fighting, but they found out from the medevac crew that all the enemy cruisers had been shot down. What was left were Pitspawn on the ground who were selling their lives dearly out of a fanatical loyalty to Unicron. Looking out past the door gunner, they saw the smoking remains of what had been towns, and here and there were dead Acolytes.

As they flew over Washington, whole sections of Anacostia were now burning rubble. The streets were full of shell-shocked survivor, and bodies, a lot of bodies. But they didn't see a single Pitspawn still moving.

They arrived at Walter Reed and Anna finally got a signal on her commlink. She called her father. "Dad, we found Mom and she's alive. We're at Walter Reed. They're taking her into surgery right now."

"What happened?"

"There were a whole lot of dead Pitspawn scattered all over the side of that mountain. I didn't really have time to worry about them. When we got there, Star realized Mom was alive so we called a medevac and they brought us all here. They were working on her all the way up here but I don't know everything they did. Wait, Star said something."

She held the phone up. Star said, "Uncle Will, I sent Ratchet a copy of the flight. He's going to be able to tell you more after he sees what all they did."

"Thank God. Are you and Anna OK?"

"We're fine. We're going to stay right here until they let us see Aunt Sara."

"Keep me updated."

"Yes, Uncle Will."

"I love you, Daddy."

"Love you too, Annie. Love you, Star."

*-T-F-Rising*

Aboard Unicron, Hot Rod and Blue Streak carried the two humans up through the decks as far as they could until the first charge went off. Then they dived through the nearest door and hunkered down, shielding Kaela and Kylie. The other two charges went off, followed by the roar of a huge fireball up the stairs. The force of it blasted out over them, would have knocked them flying if they weren't magna-locked to the deck. Both of them screamed as their back armor overheated, and shut down their pain sensors. They prayed their energon wouldn't catch fire, that would be horrible for all four of them. Everything was shaking like a violent earthquake, and a dense black smoke started filling the corridor.

Kaela and Kylie started to choke and soon lost consciousness. Hot Rod was thankful at least that they wouldn't know when the fire got to them. He tried to tell himself what mattered was that Unicron had been stopped, but he was sorry he hadn't been able to get Kaela and his brother and sister out. He was sorry to leave Que alone. Even though he couldn't feel the pain, he could still feel things melting inside and systems were going offline one by one. He had hoped it would be fast. The last thing he did before his joints locked was pull his brother closer. He saw a bright light and wondered if it was his optics burning out or Unicron exploding. He thought he saw figures moving, then finally there came a merciful blackness.

*-T-F-Rising*

Optimus Prime pursued Galvatron out to black sky. They exchanged fire all the way, neither able to land a telling shot.

Then Optimus saw where Galvatron was leading him. It was his first real sight of Unicron—when he had been captured, he had not gotten a look at the Devourer from his cell inside the Acolyte cruiser. Now he hung in orbit just sunward of the moon.

::So it's true, you really did bow to Unicron.::

::As a means to an end, fool.::

::The Pit had to be better than the slavery you've chosen!::

::What would you know of that? Doubtless you were treated to a hero's welcome, for throwing your life away for an _insect.::_

Optimus did not deny it. ::You were Lord High Protector. You could have had all the public honors any mech could have wanted. At that time I was just an archaeologist and content to remain so, not a public hero like the mighty Lord High Protector. It was your name they would have cheered in the streets, not mine, and you were welcome to it. What could Sentinel have offered to tempt you down this path?::

Galvatron said nothing, and Optimus wondered if he even remembered how the war had started, so many many vorns ago.

There was a flash of light from Unicron. Their battle momentarily forgotten, they turned to see explosions spiderweb across his surface, growing and joining until he was a maelstrom of dark energon flame. Then there was a tremendous blast from deep within, as matter turned to plasma. Unicron's death scream left every bot in the system reeling. The fireball hung there like a dark star for a long moment, then faded into memory.

Galvatron regained his equilibrium to realize that his bond with Unicron was broken. He had his life and he had his freedom—if he could evade his accursed brother. ::This ends for now. The next time we meet, mark me, I will sear this world and destroy every last one of your Autobots. You will watch your insects die one by one. You will watch me take your femme for my own. Perhaps if you both beg enough I will allow you to die, but not before you endure all that I did in the Pit. Until we meet again, _brother."_

He transformed and flew outsystem. Optimus fired another few shots at him, but he was already out of range. There was a short flash as he jumped.

Hot Rod and Bluestreak were gone, their clan bonds broken. Clearly, they had been responsible for Unicron's destruction, somehow. He was furious at the unfairness of that. He and Elita had lived their lives. They had been prepared to die if that was the price to be paid. Hot Rod and Bluestreak were just a couple of _kids_. What kind of a Pit-be-damned universe took the lives of promising young mechlings and left him to tell the tale? But their sacrifice had saved two races and the world that they all called home.

The _New York_ came to investigate the explosion and took him aboard. Leaving his flight deck in the hold, he went to see how the battle was going now that Unicron was no more.

(Continued in Part 4)


	58. Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 4

(Chapter 40—Ride the Hurricane's Eye Part 4)

*-T-F-Rising*

Kylie wakened lying on sand. She gasped a deep breath of clear, fresh sea air, and realized she was breathing. She sat up and looked around wildly for her brothers and Kaela. They were all there and just waking up also. They were on a beach. She shivered in the morning chill. Off in the distance Kylie could see some kind of bridge extending off into the fog. She turned slowly. Beyond the beach were a...row of hotels?

"Where—how—" She literally pinched herself. That was real enough.

Kaela stared at the fully healed hand-print-shaped scar on her arm, and took a deep breath, which her lungs shouldn't have been capable of. She was enough of a healer to know what smoke inhalation did.

Blue was doing his own version of pinching himself, running self-diagnostics twice to be sure the results were really what he'd thought he'd seen the first time.

Hot Rod remembered. One moment they had been burning alive, and the next—they were somewhere that was not life but not quite death either. He could recall flashes of quiet voices and a healing touch, a drink of something like energon but not, something that had fizzed through his systems and healed whatever it touched.

_It isn't your time, little brother. Take some time to figure out who you want to be before you come back here._

He checked the GPS. "We're...this is Virginia Beach."

They got up, content to wander around a little and shake the sand off before transforming. Hot Rod sent out a confused query, and was instantly caught up between Optimus and Que. After the joyous reunion, after assuring Que that the others were OK also, he got Optimus' location. It was on the other side of the port, and they worked their way up there around broken bridges and blocked roads. Optimus was with Elita. They exchanged stories, not quite coherently on Gold Team's part, and no more believable for being spoken out loud. Kaela went to work and got Elita stabilized for transport back to the DC base.

They were all surprised as Pit when the Chinook that came to get her turned out to be one of the civilian mechs, Circuitbreaker. A human civilian who had made the run up to DC with them had been a retired Army helo pilot. They had hooked up with three other random people from the refugee caravan who wanted to help out, transscanned a military Chinook, and volunteered to fly medevac. Long Haul had done the same thing after Circuitbreaker's pilot had got hold of some old friends of his who also could fly a big chopper.

Kaela asked for a tie-down to rig a safety harness and rode back in the cargo net with Elita. The rest of them formed up a unit and got back in the fight, there were still Acolytes out there who needed dealt with. They met up with Red Team outside some little town called Dale City. Skids was out of the fight, having got blown off his feet into a construction site full of rebar, but Mudflap said he was OK back at the HQ. Skids had also told him Ratchet was there now too and had a real field hospital set up.

That reassured Optimus about Elita. Jolt was good, but Ratchet was the best there was.

The Acolytes they started catching were completely glitched, attacking everything in sight like rabid dogs, but they had no sense of tactics or self-preservation. The Autobots developed a strategy of the smaller bots leading them into a killing ground, never letting the crazed Pitspawn within melee range, where the front-liners could deal with them. There was no need for taking chances against mindless enemies. Eventually it went an hour, then two before another was located, and finally there were no more.

*-T-F-Rising*

Something kept beeping in her ear. Sara tried to swat at it, and found her arm fouled up in some kind of string, and something pinched her just below her elbow. What the—?

She opened her eyes to see Will staring down at her, with his hair sticking out in every direction and two day's growth of whiskers. But the look he gave her was sheer joy.

Hospital. The string was an IV line, the pinch its needle.

"Good God, y'look like sumthin' th'cat dragged in," she mumbled, her words slurred as if she'd been drinking all night.

He laughed, a little hysterical, a lot relieved. He bent over to kiss her, very gently. "I'm not the only one."

Memory came back. "I guess. Where are the girls?"

"Mom!" Anna rushed to her bedside from where she'd been sleeping on the floor next to Star. The femme came out of recharge and sat on her heels beside the bed, wary of poking her helm through the ceiling. There were explanations, and lots of tears, but more than anything there was joy that they were all together, against all hope and reason.

*-T-F-Rising*

A few days later, Elita moved slowly across the parking lot. Her new arm and leg were integrating fine, but she needed to start using them. For now, she was just allowed to walk by the river, no transforming, nothing strenuous. She touched on her link with Optimus. He was in a meeting with FEMA, the governor of Virginia, and the DC mayor, discussing how the Autobots could best help with rescue, recovery and rebuilding. It was a welcome distraction to know that Ratchet had allowed her to go outside.

A truck skidded to a halt and a man got out, yelling about needing help and people trapped in a basement. Elita looked around, there was no one but Ratchet and herself.

"I'll go! You're not ready for taking your alt form, much less that kind of work," Ratchet said.

She smiled. "Nonsense. We're still better off together than apart. Let's stop worrying about things we can't help and get those people out of that building, shall we?" If she transformed a little more slowly than usual, it was still smooth and graceful. Ratchet shook his head, but followed suit. Elita was going to do what Elita was going to do.

*-T-F-Rising*

The Tribe was doing rescue work as well. They hadn't really asked permission, and officially FEMA didn't know there were kids helping out. Basically what they were doing was a house by house search in Anacostia. They marked the location of remains, and called in a rescue squad when they found survivors, unless it was a situation that something had to be done immediately. The seeker twins proved very effective at finding trapped people, aerial recon was a seeker's first purpose after all. Toby and Shawna were small enough to fit in confined spaces and look for survivors.

When a news team showed up trying to get them on camera, they were told to go back to HQ for a while. Since they were all tired and needed energon, especially the seekers, Shaker ordered them back to base.

They rolled into the parking lot tired and filthy, ready for a shower, a meal, and sleep or recharge. Shawna had poked a nail in her servo and it hurt. Firecracker's bad leg was bothering him. They had all seen way too many three day old dead bodies today. They all missed their parents.

Anna asked, "Who are those two guys in that pickup truck?"

Shawna did a double-take. "That's our dads—and they're not murdering each other!"

They got out of Shaker's cab and Anna stood by Star, her rifle casually pointed down beside her.

At a signal from Shaker, all the bots transformed, except the seekers, who hovered right overhead in UAV form.

Shaker ordered, "You two, outta the vehicle and state yer business."

They were quick to obey. It was easy for them to see that their kids had found not just friends but cohort. Shawna's dad held up empty servos. "We're not here for trouble. We just came to see if you're OK. Your moms are worried."

"You threw us out. We found a place where we belong," Toby said.

"You've seen us, now you can go home and tell them we're fine," Shawna said.

Her dad took a step forward, but stopped when the team bristled. One of the NEST troops unhelpfully yelled, "I got twenty on the hillbillies!"

Shaker growled, "We got this, we don't need an audience! There ain't gonna be no fight for ya to bet on!"

Toby's dad said, "Look, we were wrong. When I found out you were right in the middle of all that fighting, all I could think was, if anything happened to you—"

Rick Perry said, "When Bobby Joe and I started talking about it, we figured out we didn't really know how it all started. Your great-grandma said it was over some drunken fight in her dad's time and now we don't even know why. Enough's enough. The feud's over. Come home."

Shawna said, "I think it's too late for that now. We are home. And Anna's mom's in the hospital right now. But maybe we could come back for a visit when things quiet down some."

They had to just accept that. They had stupidly tried to come between sparkmates, and they'd found out how well that ever worked. Now they had a long uphill battle to regain their kids' trust. That had to start somewhere. "Long as we're here, how can we help?" Bobby Joe asked.

"The Red Cross is coordinating volunteers," Star told them. "Do you have a place to stay?"

"Camping in the truck."

"Come on in," Shawna said in a long-suffering voice.

Inside, it was crowded, warm and busy. Shawna went to get her servo fixed, and the rest of them headed for the showers and wash racks, squabbling about whether it was the girls' turn to go first or the guys. There were hot water issues with so many people here.

Elita nodded a greeting to Rick and Bobby Joe. "Is everything all right here?" Beneath her courteous tone was an edge that promised if it wasn't all right, it soon would be.

Toby saved face for everyone. "Yes, Prime. They came to see if we were OK, and to help out."

"Welcome."

"Thank you, Prime."

"We already have more people here than we know what to do with, but if you can stand the crowd, you're welcome to stay. That taped-off area is field ops, stay out of there unless you have a reason to be there. Anywhere else out here is fine."

"We don't want to be any trouble."

"You aren't," she replied. "You have family here."

Shawna returned with a staple in her hand and orders not to transform it until the tear self-repaired. She ran for a quick shower, then they all gathered with energon and MREs. Bobby Joe and Rick started getting to know their kids' cohort.

*-T-F-Rising*

Gradually the emergency passed, as previous tragedies had proven they always did. Recovery would take years, but the people and businesses who had experience with those things got to work, and soon the sound of hammers and saws replaced the constant wail of sirens. Sara was let out of the hospital, and they were informed that she and the girls were invited to the White House in two weeks to receive an award. Sara had Scramble until the doctors allowed her to walk, probably another month at least.

People started going back and forth to Diego Garcia and more and more stayed. Mith and the other hackers went back to their peacetime lives, demobbed as it were, to begin their new lives as techno-organics. This had been an adventure they would never forget—and it had forged friendships that nothing would ever break.

Hot Rod, Blue and Kylie were glad they were Diego Garcians, not Americans, because it saved them the spotlight. As far as they were concerned, of their team, Kaela had been the real hero.

Optimus found them out behind the building, having escaped from the bustling commons to the quiet riverbank for a while. They started to get up respectfully, but he stopped them and sat down with them. The distant noise of construction crews drifted across the water.

"I never did find out exactly what happened."

"We thought Mikaela reported everything already. I guess what we said back in Norfolk didn't make much sense."

"You may not know that Mikaela is a master of the art of reporting the bare facts. It was little more than 'Unicron exploded. We woke up in Virginia Beach. The end.'"

"We were checking out what was at that set of coordinates, Prime, and found the space bridge."

"Yes." The reason Prime was having this conversation with them, and not Wheeljack, was that he and Kaela had gone out to Area 51 to help take the space bridge apart and analyze it. So much for keeping the technology to themselves. Possession was nine points of the law and the Air Force had got to it first, damn Stormracer for being big enough to fly off with it. Optimus had been lucky to get his scientists on the team.

Hot Rod continued his report. "We killed the guards and followed the prisoners through. We sent them all home, but we couldn't hold that area. We destroyed the bridge controls so they couldn't bring anyone else through. The only way out of there was a maintenance area. We realized if we could follow his energon lines, we might be able to do something useful. What we found was his spark chamber. It was—there was a huge reservoir of dark energon. Kaela figured out how to set it on fire with some C4."

"She carries around C4?"

"I guess...if you're Kaela Banes, you never know when something like that might come in handy, Prime," Blue answered. "And she was right."

"..."

Hot Rod went on after a while. "I don't really know what happened after that. We were dead, or the next thing to it. Then the Ancient Ones…did something. They healed us and…dropped us off on the beach. They said it wasn't our time."

Kylie shuddered, "Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but if they were gonna rescue us anyhow, sooner would've been better. Like right after Kaela finished setting the charges."

Blue said. "It was worth it. Those people…"

"It was Cassidor all over again—except on Cassidor at least we had a chance to fight back. There was nothing the prisoners could do."

"Oh, yeah, I'm not saying that. It was definitely worth it," Kylie said. "But we didn't really kill Unicron, did we, Prime?"

"Not forever, no. The war between good and evil is eternal. But you won your battle in that war. He's back where he came from, and there he will stay for quite some time. I have seen many impressive things in my time but I believe that tops the list. You have every reason to be proud of yourselves."

"It was Kaela," they chorused, then all three of them laughed at themselves. Hot Rod said, "Really, it was, though. All we did was run interference for her and get her where she needed to be."

"Accomplishing a mission takes every member of a team, even if only one fires the shot that ends the battle," he told them. "What you did will be remembered forever. None of our legends speak of greater courage or self-sacrifice. Every living thing in the galaxy owes you a debt."

Kylie flushed red with embarrassment, and the mechlings weren't much better. "We were just in the right place at the right time. That's really all."

He was sure that was the way they saw it, so he didn't bother pointing out that most people in their situation would have been trying to escape, not sacrificing themselves to end the war. Most people would have figured there was nothing they could do against a threat the size of a small moon. Unicron had underestimated them, as most people would have underestimated themselves, and he had paid the price for it.

They didn't want to be "big damn heroes" like NEST sarcastically put it. Optimus said, "There's no reason to believe we can't go home now and live our lives. Galvatron might be trouble, but he won't be _this_ kind of trouble."

"Yes, Prime."

*-T-F-Rising*

Two weeks later, except for the construction zones, Washington was getting back to normal. The White House lawn hosted a gathering of the powerful, the highborn and the newsworthy one sunny afternoon.

Scramble proudly rolled Sara up onto a heavily reinforced stage beside Star and Anna. President Seaborn presented their Congressional Medals of Freedom to Nightstar and Annabelle, then he said, "First of all, by a special act of Congress, Major Sara Lennox, you are hereby recalled to service in the United States Marine Corps as of last June 16th. The reason for that is, the Medal of Honor is only awarded to active-duty members of the United States Armed Forces."

Sara managed not to gasp out loud, but her eyes widened slightly. "Sir, yes sir!" She managed to snap out. She did not salute because she was in civilian clothing, but her bearing was pure Marine.

Seaborn read from the award, "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of her life above and beyond the call of duty:

On the night of the sixteenth of September, 2020, Major Sara Lennox, her daughter Annabelle and their friend Nightstar were involved with the evacuation of civilians from the Norfolk, Virginia area when Nightstar detected the presence of a Pretender hiding among the civilians. She challenged the spy and combat immediately ensued. Major Lennox was shot in the left leg but overpowered and killed the spy with her combat knife. Locating data cards on the remains, Major Lennox, Ms. Lennox and Nightstar attempted to draw enemy pursuit away from the civilians rather than seeking immediate attention for what proved a life-threatening injury, with complete disregard for her own safety. They proceeded into the Virginia Highlands, but when Major Lennox realized her injury was slowing her companions down, she elected to split the party. While Ms. Lennox and Nightstar continued through hostile-held territory with the captured information, Major Lennox took a marksman's position commanding the mountain highway. She proceeded to neutralize fourteen enemy combatants before her position was overwhelmed. Major Lennox was wounded again in the resulting firefight and left for dead, however she recovered sufficiently and maintained enough presence of mind after they had left to stop the bleeding and evade capture until extracted. Her actions were instrumental in the delivery of intelligence to NEST command which led directly to the rescue of 162 civilian hostages.

Major Lennox' extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service, and reflect great credit upon herself, NEST Company Alpha, and the United States Marine Corps."

Seaborn had the strangest feeling that Leo McGarry was proudly looking on as he placed the Medal of Honor around her neck and shook hands with her for the camera.

"Colonel Lennox, Ironhide, Chromia, if you'd like to join us on stage."

"Thank you, Mr. President." Will looked proud enough to bust the buttons off his dress uniform as he came up to stand between his wife and daughter. Ironhide stood tall behind Chromia and Nightstar. That picture made front pages all over the world and lengthened lines at recruiting offices everywhere.

There was a White House picnic reception on the lawn, which led to an impromptu Big Six summit under a tree.

Sara accepted congratulations from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who presently was General Bedford of the Marine Corps. It felt strange when the General timed his salute to coincide with hers.

*-T-F-Rising*

That night in a fancy hotel room overlooking the Mall, Will helped Sara into bed then put Scramble in Annie's room. She and Star were still out partying with some kids of the White House staff and their friends. With Flareup as their chaperone, Will didn't expect them back before dawn, but they weren't going to get into any serious trouble either.

Sara carefully rolled over in bed to look out the window. "They did a great job restoring the monuments."

"Yeah, old Abe has a new statue in his memorial," Will said.

"How did they keep an act of congress a secret?"

"When both sides of the aisle actually agree on something it's pretty amazing what they can orchestrate," Will said. "They did most of it by text, then they passed it by voice vote right before the ceremony, and President Seaborn signed it just before he came out on stage."

"I'm proud of this, don't get me wrong, but I'm not a hero, Will! I figured I was dead anyhow, I just wanted to give the girls the best chance I could. It's what any mother would have done. This is...too much."

Will turned out all the lights and got under the covers with her. "Sara, you don't have to wear that for yourself. That isn't the kind of a Marine you are. You wear it to honor the guys and gals who didn't make it home."

She nodded. That was a duty she could accept. "They tell me my left leg's going to be an inch shorter than my right one. I'll never be fit for combat duty again."

"Most people who get shot up by a bot twice don't get up and walk around at all. Only a Marine."

Sara snorted.

Will said, "The tradition is, Medal of Honor recipients get to choose their duty station. I need someone to head up Earth Defense Forces training. If you decide to stay on active duty, I hope you'll decide to do that. There are always going to be bad guys out there. The new kids coming on deserve the best training we can give them."

She thought about it. After all that had happened, fourteen though she may be, Annie would never be a kid again. She'd done a grown up job getting those data cards through. And then she and Starry had done another grown up job going back after her, when they had every reason to believe they'd be bringing her body home. They'd start training as soon as they could. She had just enough time to get an academy going before they'd be old enough to attend.

She couldn't keep Annie from following her ambitions and she wouldn't try. But she would make sure that her daughter and all those kids got the best start possible.

Will reached over to touch his wife's shoulder, just to reassure himself that she was there. Her fingers curled around his as they drifted into sleep.

_A.N.: Chapter title from Ride the Hurricane's Eye by Rednex. /A.N._


	59. The Rising

(Chapter 41—The Rising)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

_(A.N. Mature chapter. There is something in here that could be interpreted as mpreg so you are warned. For the record, IMHO, there's no such thing as mpreg in a species that has no physical sex differences. Some people might be squicked by some Cybertronian medical description in this chapter as well.)_

(2021—Washington DC, Diego Garcia)

Optimus and Elita watched the moon come up over the Washington Monument. He said quietly, "The last time I was here, Sentinel and I got into it right over there."

"Now it's a place of peace."

"How long will it last?"

Elita listened to the little waves lapping at the reflecting pool and felt the warm breeze, carefully considering her answer. "I don't think for a moment Unicron has been destroyed forever, any more than Primus ended with Cybertron. But they're forces of nature. Their eternal battle won't be rejoined in our lifetime. Galvatron escaped to the back of beyond. If and when he decides to come back, we'll be ready for him, but that will be clan skirmishes assuming he can find any other 'Cons out there who are still willing to follow him, not the all-out warfare we've come to call normal."

That had been his assessment. It was reassuring that Elita agreed with him, especially about what the long-term ramifications were likely to be, and that she had come to her conclusions independently.

She contemplated the stars in the reflecting pool as she thought it over. "Love, our job from now on out will be to rebuild. At least I hope we've seen enough threats to the entire galaxy for one lifetime!"

He nodded and put his arm around her. Spending the rest of his life rebuilding sounded wonderful. "What would you think of having a sparkling of our own?"

Elita said, "I never expected to have the freedom to raise a little one. But I think we've been blessed with that freedom. Yes, Optimus, I would be very happy to raise a sparkling with you. I just don't want anyone to think we cut the line ahead of other bots. We won't be the only ones on the waiting list." They walked to the closest street that was open for traffic, and transformed to roll back to the local NEST HQ.

Optimus replied, "I know. But we have the time to wait, now."

Some tired construction workers coming out of a bar waved a greeting. Optimus tapped his horn in response. They joined a line of cars waiting to get on the beltway.

The DC headquarters was still under repairs, both from the fighting and TC's bad landing. The Seeker had earned his place with the Autobots, if he ever chose to claim it, but at a high cost. Ratchet still didn't know if he would ever fly again without a full reformat. Building a new frame even similar to his would take a while, if he decided to go that route. He was at Andrews now, Stormracer had taken him in. There was a brotherhood of the skies that went beyond faction or even species, and she had the best facilities.

Elita picked up on his musings through their link, and she sent a playful image of Stormracer and TC with a flock of seeker sparklings following them like a row of little ducks. He laughed, but he wouldn't be surprised if something like that eventually followed. Stormracer seemed to be the kind to get what she wanted, sooner or later.

Optimus and Elita went around a couple pallets of construction supplies covered with plastic tarps and transformed to get past the huge vinyl sheet strung over where the door had been. Gold Team and Jolt were all in the commons, they stood as the Primes entered. Optimus told them all to sit back down, and joined them while Elita got some energon. It felt strange for the place to be quiet, after the crowds and commotion of the last few weeks.

Hot Rod asked, "How was the ceremony?" They felt bad for missing Sara, Anna and Star's big moment, but the limited space had meant the guest list was restricted to VIPs and family.

Optimus told them about it, and about the fast one the Congress had pulled so that Sara could be awarded the military medal which was more in keeping with her actions rather than the civilian one, which could be awarded for service as well as for valor. "We have no such tradition, but if we did, what you three and Mikaela did was just as worthy of recognition."

Hot Rod shook his head. "We didn't have time to think about it. That was nothing like what Sara Lennox did on that mountaintop."

Kylie said, "Amen. I can't imagine just sitting in a sniper's nest knowing if she took her shot, she'd never be able to outrun whoever made it up there. We didn't have time to get really scared till it was almost over."

Optimus saw the humor in the way the three of them scrambled out of the spotlight as fast as they could. But he knew they were just being honest. They really didn't think they had done anything other than their duty. Mikaela would have said the same thing. They didn't see how far they had gone, as Sara's medal citation had read, above and beyond the call of duty. Maybe it was for the best if they looked at it that way. Maybe thinking of it as just having done what was necessary would help them put it behind them and live their lives in the peace that their sacrifice had earned. There were plenty of old warriors around here who knew full well the true value of young lives laid down freely for the good of others. That the Ancient Ones had chosen to take a hand in it didn't change what they had done.

They traded stories for a few minutes. Jolt had a particularly harrowing one involving an Anacostia school where a lot of kids and teachers had taken refuge in the basement, and an Acolyte with a flame thrower who had to be stopped before he could get to them. It had been necessary to take one life to save dozens of innocent civilians, but that wasn't easy for a healer to accept.

The stories, after so many repetitions, were beginning to become just that—old war stories. They were the veterans who had survived to tell them, to listen to them and understand them.

After a while, Optimus and Elita went to their quarters here. The windows were all broken out and everything along that wall was smashed. They decided just to tack some plastic over the broken windows and sweep the debris into a pile in the corner for now. They could actually clean out the mess tomorrow, when they wouldn't wake everybody up throwing junk out. They had recharged in worse places, after all.

Optimus finished fastening a large blue tarp over the berthroom window, and held it aside to look out over the Potomac. Elita finished sweeping the berth clean and joined him. Something large and metal was out in the water, they scanned to be sure it was wreckage and not a living Acolyte who had somehow avoided detection. Traveling in water was the best way to do that after all. It turned out to be a some wrecked piece of human military equipment that hadn't yet been removed.

The Anacostia neighborhood, one of the city's poorest, had endured some of the most vicious street fighting. Crews were still working to recover the dead and restore utilities, a building by building effort just as Chicago had been ten years before.

All those dead were heroes, because they had all had the choice to meekly surrender to slavery and they all had chosen to die fighting with whatever weapons they could lay hands on. They had taken a few of their attackers down with them before help had arrived and turned a slaughter into a battle. The humans were going to turn several blocks of demolished housing into a cemetery for them, where generations yet unborn could come honor their sacrifice. Once Anacostia had been known as a poor neighborhood. Now it would be remembered as hallowed ground like Gettysburg. From now on, parents would bring their young ones here to tell them, _on this ground brave warriors looked evil in the face and told it, this ends here. Freedom isn't free. Here, the price was paid in full for you and your descendents._ Ten of those graves would be Cybertronian, former Decepticons who had decided to fight and die for a world that they had been unable to conquer, and some miners who had been there entirely by accident and made a stand with people they didn't even know. Ten among five thousand, here. The worldwide death toll was far higher and would probably never fully be counted.

All he knew was that the humans' Valkyries had surely been forced to work overtime that day.

Elita bowed her head, their bond filled with her spark-deep gratitude to the dead for their sacrifice, to the living for their comradeship, to the Holy Well for the safety of their clan and for their victory. Optimus could only echo that, for he had nothing that he could possibly add to it.

They felt a call through the Matrix, and allowed it to carry them into infinite white.

It was the first time that Elita had been brought here, though she knew where she was from his description. Hot Rod had been here, but he had been in no condition to form coherent memories at the time.

All six of the Ancient Ones were there, and Optimus felt a sudden premonition that this was not going to go well. He locked optics with Alpha Trion, for the first time addressing him as a brother Prime, albeit a senior and much respected one. "What do you require of us?"

"We have seen the sacrifices that our people have made, and we have found a way to see to it that those sacrifices will not have been in vain. The power of the Allspark lies dormant within the Matrix of Leadership. We will cause it to touch and change every femme, and make it possible for them to bring future generations of our kind into being."

Optimus felt Elita go cold through their bond. "So...we would become like the human women, the mothers of our race?"

"Yes, of course."

"With all due respect, Alpha Trion, I decline this 'honor.'"

"How dare you defy me?"

Elita did not falter in the slightest. "I dare because blind obedience against all common sense has never been our way. I dare because all my life has been spent fighting for freedom in the service of my people. I dare because _I will die free_ before I and my Cybertronian sisters will _ever_ be made slaves to our physical form, as so many uncounted millions of our human sisters have been!"

Nova said, "Peace, both of you! Alpha, she's right."

"We are talking about a necessary sacrifice for the survival of our race."

Hot Rod said, "No, Prime, we're not. At least, I don't think so. We're all the same _now_. Why should this be any different? You're copying this after the humans, but does it have to be that way? Being locked into one thing or another may be right for them but not for us. Change all of us. Let each individual couple decide for themselves who gets to carry the sparkling."

Nova nodded approval. "Alpha, you and Prima are the oldest of us, but you're also the most confined by programming that originated during the slave days. The Quintessons' reasons for making us mechs and femmes are not the same as the reasons why we've kept that difference long after they have been gone. It's time to grow beyond their limits, not mold ourselves to be more like them. I don't know that we would fall into the same patterns of repression and discrimination that humans have—but I also don't know that we wouldn't. We are very like them in too many ways. Why did Solus have to become a mech to become one of us? Why did Elita have to bear the responsibilities of a Prime for so long before she ever was granted the title? I won't be part of enslaving our sisters, either."

Solus transformed to _her_ alt, then back again to her true form. "Neither will I."

Vector said, "If this is turning into a schoolyard brawl, I'm not taking sides. While the lot of you beat each other senseless, I'm going to see if we can make our little brother's suggestion _work_. It's the smartest thing I've heard anyone say all vorn."

Prima said, "Alpha, they have a legitimate concern. This is a gift, make no mistake, but if I can see how it could become a curse, then you can as well. That isn't what we want for our people."

Sigma said, "And there's another thing. Look what a problem unintentional sparking is for all organic species, not just humans. There's a continual cycle of times of plenty leading to overpopulation then inevitably to misery and famine. And, on an individual basis in the case of humans, ruined lives. There needs to be some sort of failsafe to make sure this must always be an intentional, mutual choice."

Alpha nodded, finally starting to understand why he wasn't just asking the femmes to dedicate a few months of their lives to creating a sparkling. He joined Vector and Sigma.

When they returned, Vector said, "If we divide the energy of the all-spark and give a portion of it to every spark in existence, including those here in the Well, then two who so choose could use it to call another from the Well when they decide to create a sparkling. That's a simple matter of like attracting like. There's no way around the new spark needing to be carried by a parent. It will need that protection to grow stronger and build a frame for itself to survive independently. But there's no logical reason why the carrier would have to be a femme, or even why a bonded couple should have to have both a mech and a femme, to make this work. All it requires is two bots capable of a complete spark merge. Now I don't see a way around that either. Only merged sparks would be strong enough to do this, so only sparkbonded couples will be able to reproduce. Considering our lifespan, that won't be a problem. There will be enough reproductive pairs to keep our numbers up."

Alpha asked, "Does that meet with your approval, Prime?"

Elita's fields flared with irritation. Alpha had pushed a little too far, and everyone knew it but him. The rest of his cohort knew he was an unrepentant old curmudgeon whose vocalizer sometimes outran his processor, and they loved him anyway. The mortal Primes were another story. There was no reason for them to put up with it, and they weren't going to. "Do not expect me to grant you the deference that I owe only to Primus. If this is going to be a continual problem for the two of us, then perhaps you and I should settle it now."

For a moment everybot there thought the irascible old mech was going to take her up on it, but he just laughed and held up an open servo, conceding the point. "I look forward to that someday, but not while tempers are running high. Settle down, Nova, we _know_ we're all on the same side here."

Optimus watched through narrowed optics as Elita took a half step back and give Alpha Trion a respectful nod. "We are, Prime." It wasn't until the Ancient One also stepped back that he relaxed as well.

Nova asked—very politely—to borrow the Matrix. Optimus nodded, that courtesy had not been strictly necessary but its omission could easily have set Elita off again, and possibly even Hot Rod as well. He could remember numerous little clashes among the old Council for pride of place, along clan and cohort lines, and those were precisely the divisions here. He released the Matrix and levitated it over to Nova.

The Starfarer studied it for a moment. "The energy of the All-spark _is _almost all here. It has left traces upon those it has touched. Sam Witwicky still has a measure of it within him, what hasn't passed to his firstborn. What offlined Megatron, or Galvatron, or whatever he's calling himself this joor, is still with him. Optimus, you and Sentinel also still carry a measure of it, as does everyone else brought across the veil in either direction in that manner. After today, so will everybot else, including the Earthborn techno-organics."

Hot Rod asked, "Nova Prime, what will happen with others who later choose to become techno-organics?"

Nova gave him a searching look, then replied, "The All-Spark is _infinite, _in ways that I don't entirely understand even after studying it all these kilovorns. In allowing itself to be destroyed and joined with the Matrix, it transformed into something far beyond our experience. I think there would be plenty to go around to every living thing in the cosmos, if that's what it decided to do. Who it chooses to be its vessel, and who it doesn't, is up to the All-Spark, if not to Primus himself. Don't be concerned for your sister. I doubt that those who choose to increase our numbers in that way would be denied. I think the All-Spark energy would spread to them through the clan bond, and surely it will when a spark-bond forms. Without that, it's all academic anyway."

"Yes, Prime."

Elita asked them, "Do you foresee any other effects on us that we should be aware of?"

"The All-Spark changes everyone it touches, but not always in an overt way," Solus replied. "Often it heals the scars we can't see. I suspect most bots won't notice a difference, besides the obvious."

They watched the Ancient Ones join in a circle around the Matrix, meshing fields with an effortless grace that made even Optimus and Elita seem clumsy and tentative in comparison. The energy confined within the Matrix flowed free, streaming out across the universes of both the living and the dead.

As the wave passed over them, they faded back into the real world.

They caught their equilibrium, then checked on Hot Rod. He had still been out in the commons with his brother and sister. His apparent momentary glitch had scared them.

Hot Rod asked, "Does that happen a lot?"

"No, and usually you have to seek their guidance before they come to you while you are awake. Don't ignore dreams, though."

Hot Rod didn't seem happy with that revelation. He wasn't any more comfortable than Optimus with the mystic side of their responsibilities.

Once the young people were settled, they returned to their quarters and finally found their berth for the night. They settled themselves and hardlined. After a long exhausting day they just sought closeness, not anything more tonight.

Optimus said, ::I'm not criticizing what you did, because if you hadn't I would have. But that took some nerve.::

::I've seen that kind before,:: she vented quietly. ::They have no respect for anybody who can't stand up to them. We all know he'd win any fight that we got into, I don't know how easily but surely he would. I won't let him just get away with trying to run over me, in any case. If I did, if I let him doubt my resolve, he'd try to make use of me again, to all our regret. They're not what I thought.::

::No. They're just people. Wise and caring, with a lot of experience, but still very capable of making mistakes,:: Optimus replied.

::Hot Rod did a good job coming up with the idea he did.::

::Yes, I hope that his ability to come up with a compromise is more what our people need from now on. I admit that my first inclination now when I'm faced with opposition—especially opposition that threatens you—is to fight back, not to seek a compromise. As the humans say, though, a carrot and a stick. I don't think his carrot would have been as effective without your 'I die free' speech. And I don't think I have ever been more proud to be your mate in my life.::

::I had no time to ask before I risked both our lives,:: she replied.

Optimus sent a burst of reassurance. ::You didn't have to. I've seen too much of what our kind can become in our selfish greed, to want to put our femmes in danger of becoming nothing but sparkling factories for the next dark lord to come down the highway. We don't need to create any more reasons for anybot to consider others inferior.::

She nodded. ::I suppose now all we can do is wait to see what happens.::

::Elita, I know we talked about this, but that was before.::

She dropped more barriers, allowing him to experience the truth of her words. ::I still want sparklings. I'm even excited about having them. It isn't that, please don't ever think—::

::No, Elita, I know what you meant. It was the idea of having no choice. No one would have had a choice. There have always been more mechs than femmes. Most pairs have always been two mechs. They would have been entirely left out under Alpha's original plan.::

Elita hadn't thought of that. It seemed her actions, and Hot Rod's compromise, had helped more people than she realized.

::Shut down and recharge, beloved. There's nothing more we need to do tonight,:: he told her quietly.

*-T-F-Rising*

There was a huge uproar the next morning when everybot started coming out of recharge with the ability and the programming to create sparklings. Ratchet couldn't get a moment's peace for all the bots who called to ask what it all meant, when he didn't yet know any more than anyone else did. Finally Prime had to broadcast an order for everyone to quit asking him about it while he figured it out.

There was very little to examine, they all now had very tiny energon lines and other connections in their spark chambers to support a growing sparkling. He theorized that the same nanobots that made self-repair possible would also construct the new bot's frame.

No one could predict how this massive paradigm shift would affect their society over time, but the main thing now was that they were no longer balancing on the razor's edge of extinction. There was a future for their people.

*-T-F-Rising*

Once Ratchet had discovered all he could and they were settled back home on Diego Garcia, Optimus and Elita decided there was no use waiting any longer. If there were risks involved, they and not their people were the ones who should discover them.

They learned something that humans had long known, mating with the intent of creating a new life was an experience set apart from anything else in their long lives. It was a sacred link to the creation of the universe. This was why Prima had called it a gift and he had been right.

The new spark bonded first with Optimus, but because his injuries from both Megatron and Darkmoon had been so recent, they had decided that Elita should carry. She took some time to get to know the little one, and got the sense that here was a tiny kindred spirit. Previous lifetimes might have been spent in Daddy's company, but this was going to be very much Mommy's little femme as well. Enchanted, she could have spent joors simply watching her little one grow.

After a time, they drew apart reluctantly. Where had been two, were now three. Of all the miracles that they had been blessed to see, this had to be the most wondrous. A new life existed now who would be something of each of them and yet something entirely new.

They made themselves presentable and went to see Ratchet.

As expected, he was furious with them. "Are you two fraggin' _glitched? _Do you have any idea what a risk you're taking?"

Elita felt Optimus' fields flaring protectively, very territorial where his mate and sparkling were concerned. She sent a calming burst to both her cohort-mates and said, "Yes, Ratchet, we took the risk. It's our responsibility, for one thing, but for another, we want a sparkling."

"Well, you're having one. As for exactly how that's going to happen, your guess is as good as mine. As far as I can tell, you're healthy. I don't know how big the sparkling will get before you separate. The stress on those repairs may or may not become an issue. I will tell you this—right now your strongest bond isn't with Optimus, it's with the little one. If we lose one of you, we'll probably lose all three. You're on light duty. No sparring, definitely no interfacing, no _anything _if you even have the slightest doubt whether it might be a bad idea, and I want you in here twice a day for monitoring. Even if you're fine we need to document every stage."

"Ratchet—" She said patiently.

He vented a sigh. "I know, Elita. We can't live without taking chances, and this one's worth taking. But I hope it crossed your daft processors what this will cost everyone if anything goes wrong."

"I will do exactly what you tell me to keep all three of us online." She turned to Optimus. ::Dear Primus, what if it came down to a choice between us and the sparkling? _Could _Ratchet let us go? I could never live knowing our daughter was killed to save me.::

Optimus said, ::Peace, beloved. That choice is yours, not Ratchet's. I will be with you here or in the Well no matter what you decide. But, for what it's worth, 'Honor before all.' If the decision were left to me alone, I would make the same one if I were in your place. I've lived my life. Let her have a chance.::

She sent a searching query, to be absolutely certain where he stood, before she spoke aloud. "Ratchet, we're agreed, and this is absolute. If you ever have to make a choice, then our daughter is to live. Do you understand? Before Primus, I swear, I would not live with that shame upon my honor as a warrior."

Ratchet vented, but then nodded, knowing that she had meant every word of that oath. Optimus was just as determined. "Yes, Prime. If it ever comes to that choice, your sparkling will live. I swear it. So let's be sure this kid doesn't grow up an orphan, shall we?"

Elita relaxed greatly at that, but Optimus knew she was still on her guard. She would be until she held the little one safely in her arms—for that matter, they both would, for the rest of their lives. That had been the nature of parents even when sparklings had come from the All-Spark.

*-T-F-Rising*

Bumblebee and Shimmer had the apartment to themselves. Skyrocket and Dragonfly were off camping with their cohort and Hound's family for a few days. They had all the time in the world for a long, slow lazy afternoon in their berth.

::Are you sure this is what you want?::

Bee's own voice came over their hardline links, not the sound clips she was used to. She loved that.

::Yes. I know everyone says you never really know if you're sparkmates until it happens, but we know. That's why we waited, to be sure it was right for us to be bonded. I've never been more sure of anything. I want this." The last plate shielding her spark chamber slid aside. Bee did the same. For the first time, they joined sparks. The sheer strength of the bond that locked into the deepest parts of them was overwhelming, frightening at first, but then the fear melted away as the last barriers fell. As they neared overload, they considered that they could try for another sparkling, and there were no reservations in any part of their combined being.

As individual awareness returned and their sparks slowly disentangled, they realized joyfully that there was another tiny spark sheltered within their still-joined coronas. The first thing that new little being ever knew was unconditional, loving, welcoming acceptance. Then to their amazement, that one little spark became two.

Shimmer cried joyfully, ::Twins, Bee, we have another set of twins!::

His warm laughter filled her. ::It looks like we each get to carry one.::

The little ones did not want to be separated at first, until their parents' sparkbond wrapped protectively around their new twin bond. There would only ever be a physical distance between them. Nothing could really come between two halves of the same spark. Then, reassured, one settled into his mother's spark, and the other into his father's.

For a long time, they just stayed like that and watched in amazement as self-repair nanobots started gathering. They knew they were making the necessary changes in them for the new ones to develop, and building frames for the new sparklings from the spark chamber out. The developments were still too small to see without greater magnification than their optics could manage, but their new programming told them what was happening.

After a while they decided to go see Ratchet, because they didn't want to deal with an aggravated medic if they waited. Kaela figured it out before they got two steps in the door, if the wide grin on her face was any indication.

Ratchet almost rebooted when he heard the word _twins._ After he finished examining them, and in what he knew was probably an excess of caution sent them away under the same restrictions as Elita, he turned to Kaela and said, "Thank you, Primus, for sparklings-but three pregnant bots at once?"

Mikaela said, "Post-war baby boom. How does this work now, anyway?"

"You know the birds and bees, Cybertronian style. Only now, instead of coming fully formed from the All-Spark, now two parents who make a complete merge might create a new spark, sheltered in one of their spark chambers and drawing resources from that bot's frame until it's strong enough to survive on its own as a very small sparkling."

"That's almost exactly like human pregnancy, except for the part about either being able to carry it." She put her hand on her belly, thinking of when she had carried her son.

Ratchet said thoughtfully, "I wonder if our lack of a sex difference isn't what sets our two species apart more than anything else. Primus knows we can find or invent reasons to be prejudiced just like anyone else can, but we aren't set apart from half our kind from the very moment we're sparked."

Kaela finished the last of her reports and put her datapad away. "I've been on the receiving end of that prejudice all my life, Ratchet. I've wondered what it's like to grow up without being exposed to that. I'd also like to see somebody do a study on how their former human sex affects the psychology of the ones who become techno-organics and it doesn't matter anymore."

Ratchet agreed that would be an interesting study, but it would be one that the techno-organics would have to do for themselves. He had his servos full for the foreseeable future. He made a tally of all the sparkbonded pairs that he knew of, and wondered how many of them would want one of their own, and how soon. "You went aboard one of the Navy ships to see a specially trained healer when you were having Russ."

"Yes, an obstetrician/gynecologist. They take care of all kinds of female issues, not just childbirth. They do the human versions of that special cancer scan the female humans have you do every year."

"I still don't see why you're so much more concerned about cells in those areas malfunctioning than anywhere else. I do a full scan whenever anyone comes in and asks for just that!"

"We don't have a way to scan every cell to see if the DNA is fragged up. You may not be able to cure cancer, yet, but finding it that early is something we could never do. Just catching every single case of cancer before it has a chance to grow is going to make the people here a lot healthier than anywhere else on Earth."

Ratchet looked pensively at his scan of Shimmer's tiny sparkling. How many new bots would there have to be, before enough of them became healers that their medical advances could be made available to all humans?

*-T-F-Rising*

Sam sat on the beach with Carly, Bumblebee and Shimmer. "Kinda hard to wrap my head around you being _pregnant_, Bee."

He smiled and held his new sparkmate close. "Twins. Not fair… for Shimmer to… carry both. My son. Could not… love… this one… more than… the ones… I already have. But… to feel… this one… growing and… moving...amazing. A miracle."

Carly said, "Yes, it is, Bee. Sam, I wish I were a mind-reader so I could share with you the absolute wonder I felt when I first knew I was going to have your children."

Sam put his arm around her. "And your people never used to have little ones this way?"

Shimmer shook her head, smiling and lacing her fingers together over her spark. "It's a true miracle from Primus. There's no more need to take a sparkling frame to the All-Spark, or to risk our lives by spark-dividing. The Ancient Ones told the Primes that from now on as long as two of us can find real love, our race will go on. And theirs was the first to be sparked this way. The first new Prime of this generation. At least we're all hoping."

Carly smiled, "A little prince or princess."

That was the beginning of a voyage of discovery. It took two weeks for the new little bot to grow large enough for normal optics to see. By then, simple core-level programs—spark-level ones—were already running. The small frames that developed were no larger than a human baby, so very tiny for such large parents but that was all the space that there was available. It took four months, but that seemed to be a matter of allowing time for the carrier's nanobots to restore the materials that were borrowed for the sparkling.

Elita spent the last month of her pregnancy in constant pain, due to the pressure on the necessarily primitive repairs that Fixer had made to her spark chamber. The thing was, those receptors had the highest priority and could not be shut down indefinitely like more peripheral sensors easily could. Her body thought she was in immediate danger of taking fatal damage and would not permit her to ignore it on a long-term basis. So, while Shimmer and Bee enjoyed the last weeks of carrying their offspring, Elita spent that time in her berth, flat on her back, bored during the day and at night recharging in short snatches before the sensors cycled again.

The worst part of that was needing to keep her bond damped so that Optimus could work and recharge. Ironhide stepped up as 2iC, and if Sentinel and Megatron hadn't so _thoroughly_ shamed the title, Optimus would have named him Lord High Protector. That was the job he was doing, they would just need to come up with something politically correct to call it.

One evening Elita and Optimus watched a heated UN argument over global warming. Energon technology was slowly gaining a foothold, over the screams of the oil industry, because rising sea levels were starting to cause panic. Even so, it wasn't happening fast enough to prevent lasting and unknown effects on Earth's climate. Their reaction to that was poignantly affected by the knowledge that they were listening to an argument about their daughter's future.

Elita said, "We really need to decide on a designation soon."

Optimus replied, "If you agree, I would like to honor one who gave his life for us here. Jazz."

"Meister. As a scout I'm proud to agree with that. From what I've heard of him, that's a designation she can be proud to carry. She can be Jazzie as a sparkling, and if she carries the sigil she could come to the Council as Jazima. It's perfect."

Two days later, separation began. The crystal matrix of Jazzie's spark had developed in a manner that created a tetrahedral plane where the two sparks needed to divide. Jazzie's little digits all ended in tiny sharp claws.

Ratchet discovered that the hard way when he had examined her. He frightened Jazzie by touching her with a small sensor. She let out an audio-shattering screech and her little claws jabbed the little instrument very painfully—and then he had to evade the exponentially more dangerous situation of a mother's split-second reaction to her sparkling's terrified screech. They hadn't realized something that small could make that much noise, or that Ratchet could teleport—anyway, nothing else seemed to explain how fast he got out of Dodge. Elita had one arm over her sparkling and the other with her blade ignited, not burning as bright as her narrowed optics.

Optimus yelled, _"Elita!" _He got between her and Ratchet. "What in the Pit was that!"

She retracted the blade. "Ratchet, I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for. That was a textbook example of what happens when a core-level imperative gets triggered. I scared the slag out of your kid without warning you first. I didn't know it would scare her. Now we know. I'm only online right now because it's apparently limited to the carrier."

"What exactly happened?" Optimus asked.

He showed them the sensor. "She's grown claws. Very hard, very sharp ones. She reacted defensively, and so did Elita. There's a natural weakness in the crystal structure where your sparks are joined. If I'm right those claws are intended to split the two of you apart."

"That doesn't sound like fun, and she's so tiny," Elita said. "Is there anything we can do to keep it from hurting her so much?"

Ratchet shook his head. "I doubt it. She probably needs that sensor data to make the cut safely. As a result, she may not process it as pain the way an adult would. At least I hope that's the case."

Optimus commented, "That's fairly complicated programming."

Elita nodded. "The core-level stuff is very compressed. That one program is about all she's processing now that she's expanded it. She recognizes her creators and that's about it, but Optimus, doesn't she have clan bonds? I can't be sure because mine are interfering."

"Yes, she does."

"Ratchet, let's see if she's able to recognize her clan bond with you."

"Sure would make my life easier," the old healer replied.

That unfortunately didn't work, but with their cohort bond opened fully Elita was able to stop recognizing him as a threat and convey her trust in him to Jazzie. Elita wanted her cohort there. Chromia came in to help, while Ironhide stayed back and generally made sure others who weren't part of the cohort stayed out of the way. The last thing they needed was a lot of overlapping, unmeshed fields confusing everything.

The separation process was actually fairly quick. Elita gave thanks for that. She was no stranger to that kind of pain. It was definitely severe enough to give anyone pause, but it passed quickly enough. She was a warrior. She would have accepted as unpleasant but necessary if she had been the only one involved, but Jazzie suffered as much as she did. Elita spoke to her softly, gently stroking her tiny back with one gentle digit. The new sparkling calmed and quieted soon after each effort, and went into recharge surrounded by her mother's fields.

Ratchet used a miniature remote to monitor both of them, successfully guessing that the little one wouldn't be afraid of something smaller than she was. Kaela also didn't scare her, for some reason known only to sparklings, and even allowed the human to attach Ratchet's medical monitor line to a port in the back of her neck. She curiously investigated this new presence on the other end of the monitor line. Ratchet was used to that, she didn't feel any different than any other new sparkling.

Finally the little one broke free. Kaela had guessed that Elita wouldn't allow her newborn out of her sight, so she just sat on her feet on the berth beside Elita with Jazzie on her lap and took care of her right there while Ratchet moved in to check on Elita. Optimus and Chromia got out of his way but didn't go far.

Once Ratchet was finished and Elita's armor was rearranged, Kaela gave Elita her tiny new daughter. The little one instantly magna-locked to her chest plate and started chattering to her in a soft language of chirps and beeps and whistles. Optimus took Ratchet's place and looked down at his mate and their offspring.

Jazzie was mostly blue with a pattern of black swirls and red highlights. Sparkling color patterns commonly changed. Sometimes parents saw a meaning in it. Ratchet thought it was just random. They typically settled on something more permanent by the time they transitioned into a youngling frame.

Jazzie was about the size of a human newborn, very tiny compared to her set of parents, but weighed closer to fifty pounds due to all the metal in her frame. Her optics had settled a bright blue as soon as her family bonds locked, even before she had completely separated from Elita. For the moment the new family was lost in each other. Ratchet, Ironhide and Chromia retreated to the other side of the bay to give them some privacy.

A few hours later, they came out in the commons to present their sparkling to the clan. She was shy, screeching if anyone came near and she wasn't magna-locked to one of her parents. Fortunately, she absorbed her birthing claws as soon as she was separated. She needed energon from one of her parents, because her systems weren't yet developed enough to convert it from the pink form that came out of a cube to the blue form that they could actually use. Already, though, her self-repair systems were hard at work making her grow. They would learn from her and from Shimmer and Bee's twins how the little ones would develop from their small, simplified newborn forms to the meter tall, forty-five kilo frames of built sparklings. In the meanwhile, she was either hungry or curious or recharging.

It was Kylie who discovered that, as long as she could sense one of her parents within a few hundred meters, she would recharge separated from them if she was put in something small where she felt secure, like Flareup's twins had been when they were younger. That suited both parents fine, since they didn't want to expose a sparkling to the sometimes fraught atmosphere and raw language in Ops if something serious was happening.

Shimmer and Bee's twin mechlings, named for some old friends of theirs, Downshift and Livewire, were separated a few weeks later. Downshift, the one Bee had carried, was yellow with blue-gray markings, his brother was the opposite. They turned out to be quiet, sweet-tempered sparklings, no more willing to be separated than any other young twins but otherwise happy to have anyone hold them if their parents were anywhere nearby.

The opening of the Earth Defense Forces Academy brought new changes to Diego Garcia. The Academy was built between the proving ground and the compound, the only area of open land that wasn't part of the nature preserve. First built was the cadet barracks and the instructors' housing, and an academic hall with six classrooms, all designed to equally accommodate both Cybertronian and human occupants. They would share the proving ground for military training, and classes would also be held in various existing facilities in the Compound and Navy port. The Tribe made up the first high school age class of junior cadets, and Hot Rod and his siblings, two minerbots named Grinder and Sapphire, and thirty carefully selected officer candidates from nations all over the world formed the first cadet corps, future officers and founders of the proud traditions of the Earth Defense Fleet.

The coming of the Cybertronians had changed Earth forever, but now Earth had changed the Cybertronians in return. Two peoples, so different yet so much the same, now shared a homeland and a common destiny. Nobody knew where the road led, but they were free now to discover its secrets in hope and peace.

_(A.N. Thus end the Cybertronian Wars, but three more epilogue chapters remain, covering another ten years into the future. If this site had a better way to handle series, they probably would be better as sequels. I'm just going to post them here to make them easier to find. This chapter title, like the story title, refers back to Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. /A.N)_


	60. Epilogue I—Seasons Change

(Epilogue I—Seasons Change)

(Disclimers in Chapter 1)

(2025—Diego Garcia)

A crowd gathered on the beach at sunset. A beautiful bride with flowers in her hair and her adoring young groom spoke ancient vows taking each other as husband and wife for as long as they lived, before family and friends and before their God. It was a very traditional American Christian ceremony, which made it very foreign and intriguing to a lot of the spectators. Mr. and Mrs. Tobias MacGregor started their new life together with a kiss and ran through a shower of birdseed to the reception awaiting them a little further down the beach. They were going to spend a month or so back in Ohio and meet some new cousins, then just bum around for a while before coming home to start their apprenticeships. Shawna wanted to be a healer, while Toby was going to work in the preserve.

*-T-F-Rising*

A few days later, Elita laughed as she watched her daughter and Kaela's son chasing Scramble around the commons. They were a contrast to Bee and Shimmer's little twins, who were quietly sprawled at their parents' feet sharing a big coloring page. Her four-year-old Jazzie'd had her first alt, a small four-wheeler a lot like Star's had been, for a few days now and she and Russ were turning out to be just as crazy. Russ, at least, was a little older than Annie had been at the time. Ten-year-olds were still bundles of energy, though.

Scramble ran between Sideswipe's legs. Jazzie tried to swerve to keep from tripping the Big Twin and ran into the back of a seating unit instead. Both mothers hurried over to take care of their kids. Jazzie was crying, and Russ was trying to be a big boy in spite of a skinned knee and elbow.

Nightstar and Anna came in on leave. Anna watched the kids for a minute. "Were we ever that little?"

The slender, graceful twenty-foot femme at her side raised a brow ridge. "So they tell me..."

They bypassed the sparkling pileup with a respectful greeting to Elita Prime and went to Ironhide and Chromia's quarters.

Ironhide yelled, "Starry! I didn't think you two would be home until tomorrow."

Nightstar grinned at her little-femme nickname and kissed his cheek. "We made good time out of Mars Base."

"Chromia! Starry and Annie are home!"

She came in carrying Star's newborn sister Aurora. Star instinctively held out her servos to hold the sparkling, and a smiling Chromia taught her how.

Ironhide took Anna aside. "Annie, did you hear about your dad?"

"No? What about him, what happened?"

"Now, he's OK, but he had a bad spell about a week ago. He collapsed during exercises in Nevada."

"Where is he? Are you sure he's OK?"

"He's home now, on medical leave. Alicia said it was a mild heart attack. He's better, but he's going to step down in Graham's favor."

She hadn't really taken in much beyond the words _heart attack. _"I have to get down there."

Star kissed her tiny sister on the helm and gently returned her to their mother. "I'll take you."

They went out and Star transformed to her alt form-a black GMC Sierra 1500 with blue lightning-bolt markings. She swung the door open for Anna.

When Will had got his star after the battle of Virginia, they had moved to nicer housing, with an attached garage with plenty of room for the two families to hang out together. Will was lying in his recliner drinking something that looked like carrot juice.

Annie rushed over to hug him. "Are you OK, Daddy?"

"Yeah, sure. Gotta watch my diet, cut down on the stress, I should be good to go."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You couldn't have got here any quicker. I didn't see any sense in scaring you when you were on your way home anyhow. Really, it wasn't that bad. First Aid was right there and you wouldn't believe how fast he got me to the base hospital at Nellis."

"Hide said you have to retire, that doesn't sound like 'nothing.'"

Will said, "It was just the right time. Graham's ready to step up. I'm not really going to retire. I'm going to join your mom at the academy. Ask Alicia if you don't believe me."

Annie swallowed her fear because it wouldn't do her dad any good. "OK, Daddy."

"Where's Star? Did you see the sparkling?"

"I'm right here, Uncle Will. Yes, she's _so_ cute!"

Sara yelled, "You're home!" The Marine proved her gimp leg didn't slow her down that much as she ran over to hug her daughter and niece.

A few minutes later, Ironhide and Chromia came over with their new sparkling. For a little while, it was almost like it had been 28 years ago on the farm when Anna had been a new baby. Now Anna was the one whose duty took her far away from home. Ironhide and Chromia were the ones with a new sparkling. Now, except for Firecracker, who was at the DC base, they were all together here.

Will told them to get some drinks. He wasn't supposed to have alcohol but that was no reason for everyone else to do without. Sara got some beers from the fridge while Starry got three cubes of high-grade down from a shelf. Will asked, "How was your flight?"

"Routine, thank God!" Anna told him. "Well, there was that little incident on Sylura with those civvies who'd never seen organics before." She decided not to tell him about a few other incidents on Sylura involving a metal planet that was essentially falling apart for lack of materials to do proper maintenance. Someone who had just had a so-called "minor" heart attack didn't need to know about things collapsing under his only begotten child. "The only actual _trouble_ we had was bailing the Top Gun Twins out of jail on Mars base for getting overloaded on cheap plonk and getting in a fight with some miners. Colonel Brewster went fraggin' ballistic! They were on punishment detail for the whole rest of the flight after they got out of medbay, and then Shimmer was waiting for them when we landed to scream at them."

Ironhide said, "Couldn't any more than get Skids and Mudflap mostly acting like grownups till those two had to come along right after them."

Chromia said, "They're worse. Skids and Mudflap can't fly."

As evening passed into night and the open garage door caught the sea breeze, laughter rang out. If Will slept most of the time, and Chromia curled up around her sparkling just like Sara had when Anna was little, they still spent a long summer night together.

Anna went to the bathroom and brought a couple more beers from the kitchen on her way back. As she gave one to her mom, she couldn't help noticing how gray her parents were getting. She didn't think her elders were invincible–God knew she'd learned better than that at the tender age of four when Ironhide had been killed–but time was passing far too fast. All they could do was hold onto times like this with both hands.

Sara asked, "So, have either of you met anybody special?"

Relaxed by the beer she had consumed, Anna smiled and said, "Maybe. We met a couple of prospectors out in the rocks, a guy named Jordan Wilson and a mech named Lodestone. They got hurt in a cave-in and came aboard for treatment. We hung out and got along pretty good. We've been emailing back and forth. We're hoping to run into them again next time through. They got a good haul and they might be starting a trading post. The miners would like not having to go all the way in to Mars Base for every little thing."

Ironhide teased Star, "Stay out of the plonk till you're sure how well you like this mech."

Star snorted, she'd heard that story.

Sara said, "It's hard, being with a civvie. What if you get assigned Earthside?"

"Bite your tongue, Mom, we don't want to get stuck Earthside. What we want is to get on a team. And we might if Shaker gets one, pretty much the whole gang could get back together. Especially once John's out of medical school. I don't think we'll tempt the mini-twins away from the diplomatic team, though, they like New York too much."

Lennox happened to know she was right, but he couldn't say anything about it until Optimus made the big announcement. The new Green Team's focus would be exploration and patrol. They were going to be assigned to the refitted _Xan II_.

Shaker had matured into a solid, dependable officer who could be trusted to accomplish things that he was assigned to do. He had learned a lot serving under Jake Brewster, and a lot more from being Wheeljack's son. That Hot Rod had apprenticed under his father made them a form of siblings. He had been surprised when Optimus had told him Hot Rod was a potential Prime, and asked him to teach the kid about commanding mixed units from a human commander's point of view, but after working with him for a while he agreed the kid was a good choice. In a way, Will could see Shaker doing the same thing for Hot Rod that Hide did for Optimus—the tough, loyal, steady 2iC who could be depended on to have his back, whatever happened.

NEST was in good hands with Graham. Will took in the precious sight of his family gathered around him, and he was sure he had done the right thing. It was time to let the next generation step up, and concentrate on his family.

*-T-F-Rising*

For once, the run out to the point was quiet and contemplative. Gold team had spent so much time out on this beach since they'd been kids together. So much had happened since then. The war with Unicron. They had finished their apprenticeships this past spring, as well as graduated from the Academy.

Blue asked, "Are you sure you're ready for this, Hot Rod?"

His brother had never sounded more serious. "I don't think anybot is ever ready. How could they be? But the Ancient Ones say it's time."

"They don't always know everything, bro. If you have doubts, you should wait."

"I don't exactly have doubts. I mean, maybe I needed hit over the helm with it, but this is what I'm supposed to do with my life. I just hope I can live up to it. Optimus and Elita have made some pretty big footsteps for me to try to follow in. I'm not like them. I'm just a regular mech."

Kylie patted his dashboard. "Maybe that's the idea, y'know? There _should_ be a regular person on the Council to speak up for the rest of us. When it got to be all nobles and stuff, was when everything started to fall apart on Cybertron. I mean, Sentinel couldn't have got anywhere in the first place if the Council had been paying attention to the important stuff, could he?"

Hot Rod had to agree with that.

Elita and Optimus were already there. They sent Jazzie over to stand with Kylie and Bluestreak. The little femme was getting too big for Kylie to pick her up any more. Blue took her when she started fussing to be held.

Hot Rod touched on his bonds with his brother and sister, Blue's solid steady beat, Kylie's ephemeral embrace, for a second before he stepped forward. "Rodimus Prime, are you prepared to take up your responsibilities to the people and ascend to the Council of Primes?"

He knelt, and made the ancient reply. "Let it be as Primus has ordained. So speaks Rodimus Prime."

It was the first time Blue, Kylie and Jazzie had ever seen the Matrix of Leadership. As a potential Prime, Jazzie knew on some core level what it was. She shyly hid her face in Blue's shoulder. His optics were on his brother, as the light from the matrix surrounded him and changed him.

When he stood, he was between Optimus and Elita in height and mass. The part of Rodimus that was a craftsmech wanted to know where the extra mass had come from—the rocks and sand were still there.

Bluestreak returned Jazzie to her parents. He and Kylie had the great honor of being the first to kneel and swear fealty to their brother. Rodimus accepted it with a profound sense of responsibility, and the feeling that he had already failed them once.

Blue told him, ::With all due respect, _Prime_, you never did any such thing. Primus forbid we ever have to be the last mechs on the bridge again, but if that's His will, I'll be just as proud to stand there with you then as I was the last time.::

::Not as damn proud as I was of you and Kylie,:: the new Prime replied.

Elita coached little Jazzie through her pledge to the newest Councilor. All she really understood at her age was how proud her parents were of her and that everyone knew Rodi was her sort-of uncle now, just like she had always known he was. With the formalities at an end, she was finally allowed to play in the surf. She had no idea as she splashed and chased the waves that one day in the future a similar ceremony awaited her. They all hoped and prayed that she would be allowed to enjoy a longer childhood than Rodimus had been granted.

That evening in the commons, the formalities of accepting the fealty of the clan was leavened by the humor of these mighty warriors. Rodimus knew that, Prime or no, most of them could still kick his aft any time they wanted, especially Ironhide. His greater size and mass gave him an edge, but probably not enough to overcome their many vorns of experience. Rodimus fully expected the old weapons master to prove it as he learned the intricacies of his new frame. They would respect the title he carried, he knew he never needed to doubt that, but as a person he was still clan to them. He would never lack their kinship and their wise counsel—or their willingness to knock him down a notch or two if he got too full of himself! The feeling of _home _centered around Wheeljack and his sibs, but it connected him to everyone here at some level.

He needed a new alt to account for his greater size. He was really going to miss his old GTO form. He wasn't sure what to choose. Optimus' Peterbilt alt had worked for him for years now, with only minor updates. Elita's Cybertronian elint vehicle was perfect for her. Neither of those really suited him, though. He wanted something fast. Humans didn't particularly design big overland vehicles to be fast. He thought he'd check with Wheeljack. The Praxians had once had some very speedy alts for larger bots. Maybe Que still had the specs. Or maybe they could find something to start with and modify it.

He reached for an energon cube at the same time as Arcee did. They looked up and suddenly saw each other as if for the first time. For a moment they were the only ones in the room. Then they both retreated back to their siblings, acting like nothing was going on but taking every opportunity to watch each other across the commons.

Chromia teased, ::See something you like?::

Arcee sent back a flustered burst. ::I'm too old for him!::

::I don't know, you're both adults. More importantly, if you count from when you both came back from the Well of Sparks, you're practically the same age,:: her sister pointed out. ::If he's the one, age isn't _that_ important.::

Arcee didn't answer, but she thought about it. There was no hurry to jump into anything after all.

Meanwhile, Blue was encouraging Rodimus, "She likes you! She's been looking at you all night!"

Kylie said innocently, "A little bird told me she's stuck in ops all day tomorrow."

Rodimus prayed for a long, quiet boring day in admin, and started thinking up intelligent questions he could ask Arcee to start a conversation.

*-T-F-Rising*

The party broke up late. Star and Anna were out. Chromia checked on Aurora and found her daughter deep in recharge. She scanned the temperature in the sparkling crate to be sure the little one was comfortable, then went to her own berth.

"I didn't see that coming."

"Arcee and Rodimus? I don't think either of them knew the other one was online till this evening," Ironhide replied. "Good match, though."

"He's a good mech, but he is a lot younger. Their lives have been so different. I don't want to see my sister get hurt, or Rodimus either for that matter. But she's been alone ever since Flareup went to New York. If he can distract her from missing Flare that will be a good thing."

"I think they'll be good for each other," Ironhide said. "She's been too quiet ever since she came back. I think Rodimus might be exactly what she needs to bring her out of it."

"You could be right," Chromia said. She paused a moment. "Whenever things start going good like this, that's when I start waiting for something else to happen, y'know?"

Ironhide held her. "I know. Look, we're who we are, so I'm not gonna try and tell you we'll never find any more trouble to get in the middle of, but it won't be as easy to find as it used to be. Things are lookin' up for once."

"I heard that before."

"Yeah, but just maybe this time it's true," the old weapons master told her.

Chromia smiled. "I really want to believe that, Hide."

"Give it time. Just give it time."


	61. Epilogue II—Generations

(Epilogue II—Generations)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1. Warning: Contains another visit from the cyber-stork.)

(2030 Wilson-Lodestone Station, Diego Garcia)

Three year old Jenny Wilson stumbled and fell on her butt. She held up her hands for Grandpa to help her up, and Will picked her up. A very pregnant Star came out into the main part of the dome. Green team was on stand down here, with both Star and Dragonfly on maternity leave, though Dragonfly still had another month to go with Shaker's and her firstborn. Both sets of grands had come out to help, and they had brought little Aurora with them, so the trading post was packed with family and friends.

Star had been helping Lodestone mind the store. It wasn't something she could see herself doing permanently, but when she was home she pitched in to spend more precious time with her sparkmate. It also left Jordan free to hang out with Anna and little Jenny. Ironhide and Chromia were inside talking to Lodestone.

The airlock cycled as a mining family came in. Silver, her sparkmate Rumble—no relation to the late Decepticon of the same designation—and their sparkling Garnet, and Silver's brother Hammerfist were frequent visitors, since they were working a claim nearby. Garnet whined for a cube of the especially fine energon that was flavored for sparklings. Her mother said, "Later, sweetspark, we'll all have something before we leave. Go play while we sell our ore and do our shopping."

Garnet, Aurora and Jenny soon were involved in some game involving chasing a ball literally all over the dome. There were metal walkways where the adults could lock down by means of magnetics, either built in for the miner bots or fashioned into their boots or peds for the humans and other bots. Kids, however, never got tired of gravity so low that anyone could kick off and fly like a comic book superhero. They tended to find out early on that solid surfaces stayed solid by means of a bumped noggin, but both Jenny and Garnet were past that stage and Aurora was too little to kick off very hard.

Sara put her arm around Will's waist. "Who would have thought our granddaughter would be playing around in zero gee?"

"Or that the neighbor kid would be a different species? Our parents never could have imagined."

"I could get used to the low gravity, it really helps my leg," Sara commented.

*-T-F-Rising*

President Bartlet-Young thanked Air Force One for such a smooth flight as her husband Charlie Young made sure she got her footing on the tarmac at the Diego Garcia airport. She hadn't planned to be pregnant in office at her age, but she'd got caught at the change, and as Charlie said, they were young at heart. Still it made state visits quite an adventure. Once the last reporter had disembarked, Air Force One transformed behind them and became just US Air Force General Stormracer for the duration of their stay on Diego Garcia.

Optimus Prime was waiting with the Big Twins. Zoey greeted him warmly. He asked about their flight, then told them, "Elita will be sorry she missed you, but with Green Team on stand down, Black Team is picking up the slack out in the rocks."

Zoey smiled, "I'm sorry to have missed her too."

Her chief of staff, Donna Moss-Lyman, reflexively scanned the area even though this was one of the safest places on Earth for her President. Wartime habits rarely faded. Josh was traveling with them, on summer break from his Georgetown poli-sci classes. He took their bags, leaving Donna unencumbered and free to move. He hadn't lost his edge either. They said hello to the twins, knew them well because as Optimus' 3iC Sides and Josh had often been opposite numbers over the years when Josh had been Seaborn's chief of staff. Donna greeted Optimus with far more warmth than formality, as was appropriate for a younger sister.

Relations between DC, London and Diego Garcia were incredibly close now, such that calls were often just to say hello, or yell at each other, or hash out a problem in five minutes that would have taken the diplomats five months of hand-wringing. Zoey absolutely loved the laid-back atmosphere of Diego Garcia. A state dinner was likely to be a cookout on the beach or hanging out in the commons. She never got to kick back like that at home anywhere except the residence or Camp David. On the other hand, she knew the bots-especially Elita-tended to enjoy the formality in Washington and London just as much.

Today they were headed for the beach. Zoey saw a crowd behind a fence and casually checked her hair. "Donna, scan the crowd for me then if all's clear, inform Dennis I'll do a fence walk. Might as well feed the paparazzi now and get it over with."

"Yes, Madame President."

After Donna's initial all-clear and the Secret Service's confirmation, Zoey walked the fence line, shaking hands, kissing babies and having her picture taken.

There was a large picnic set up in the shade of the palm trees. Zoey saw that Charlotte Mearing and Seymour Simmons had made it down there. Both were in their late sixties, and Seymour's bad leg had deteriorated to the point that he now was confined to a wheelchair nearly all the time. "Where are Will and Ironhide and their families?"

"They're out in the asteroid belt visiting their kids and grandkids. Did you hear that Nightstar is with spark?"

"No! That's great! I'm glad to hear Will was up to the trip out there too." Zoey gratefully accepted an ice-cold lemonade from Charlotte. "How have you been, Aunt Charlotte, Uncle Seymour?"

"Oh, we're healthy as horses for our age, thank you for asking, Madame President."

Seymour and Josh started talking over something, two gray heads together over God knew what and Charlotte wasn't sure she wanted to know. Zoey said, "Aunt Charlotte, if you have time while I'm here I'd like to hear your take on the Somalia situation."

"I can tell you that in one word-embargo. The nanoklick they give you an excuse. We need to be doing everything we can to help the Somalis build their own democracy. Nobody needs to be coming in from outside and making it more difficult for them."

Zoey nodded. "Are we agreed on that, Optimus?"

"If our intel confirms Charlotte's suspicions then, yes, Diego Garcia will support an embargo, with the exception of food and medical supplies."

"Of course, that's the only way I'd support it too," Zoey replied. "Cathy wants to send in peacekeepers but I still hope we can avoid that. The new coalition is still fragile. We need to help them do this for themselves, not come in and do it for them. Pierre and Dmitri will come on board. Ji-Tsan may have a political problem openly supporting the embargo, China is still too dependent on energon from the Mideast and North Africa." She grimaced a little, the more things changed the more they stayed the same. As the oil ran out, the Islamic countries realized they had a free and limitless source of energon in their sunbaked deserts. It wasn't a stranglehold on the world's economy like petrochemicals had been. There were plenty of sunny places in the world, and Diego Garcia's new industrial operation on Mjolnir was soon going to be a major competitor. But China needed a cheap source of energy right now. It was to the point where they were asking people to volunteer to become Pretenders to save food and water.

That was something else that concerned Zoey. The Chinese were growing an army of Pretenders and it had not taken off in the west. Josh was going to go through the procedure soon, but it had taken him years to make the decision, and he was only doing it because he had caught Donna in front of a mirror experimenting with gray hair so she wouldn't look so much younger than him. People in the West often made the understandable decision to die as they had lived and leave decisions about whatever they believed came after until the time came.

The US had laid a strong foundation for a counter to the Pretender problem years ago by being the next nation after Diego Garcia to offer the possibility of full citizenship to bots who wished to settle there. Their sparklings would be natural born citizens, eligible to sit in the Oval Office one day. Stormracer wasn't the only bot in the US armed forces now, just the most prominent. But the numbers weren't there. Most were happy to call Diego Garcia home. And Zoey didn't trust Ji-Tsan as she had his predecessor.

Jazzie came over with some of her classmates and politely greeted the president, before the kids descended on the picnic buffet. She was too young to start showing an interest in past lives, but there were a lot of little things that often made Optimus wonder if she really wasn't Jazz come back to them. Chief among them was her love of music, often the same music Jazz had enjoyed. For now, she was just a sparkling, still small enough not to be embarrassed to climb up on her father's lap and drink her energon and take a nap.

Russ sat not too far away with a soda and a slice of pizza. Optimus almost thought of the teenager as one of his own. He considered it an honor to be a surrogate father to his daughter's best friend. Russ had certainly been a patient big brother to her.

"How is Abbey?" He asked. The loss of Jed Bartlet had been a shock to everyone. They had all known he had survived MS far longer than most people ever expected to, living to a ripe old age and seeing his youngest sworn in as Sam Seaborn's Vice President. Still, when one night a sorrowful Donna had commed with the sad news that Abbey had found him at his desk earlier that evening, it had been unbelievable somehow.

"She's still living in the old home place in Manchester with my sister. She misses Dad, always will, but she has the great-grands up there all summer. That helps. I'm going to try to get her to spend the winter with me, but you know Mom."

"Yes, I do. I wish you the best of luck with that."

"Well, I can play the baby card this year."

"When are you due?"

"Six weeks. If Stormracer hadn't been able to play Air Force One, I'd be grounded. But since this was my only stop, they decided to let me out one more time."

Charlie said, "On the condition that you rest, love."

"And I will," Zoey replied serenely. "I'm resting right now. Tell him, Donna."

She obediently ran a scan. "Mother and baby are doing fine, Charlie. Tell Josh to be a sweetie and bring me some of that high-grade in a glass. There's a reporter up a palm tree over there with a telephoto lens and I don't want him to catch me drinking the hard stuff out of a kiddie cube."

Charlie laughed and got up, dusting sand from his pants as he went looking for Josh. Presently her husband joined them with her energon and a whiskey for himself.

Zoey asked, "How's Georgetown treating you, Josh? I can always find work for you if you want to come home."

"Actually I'm having a ball. But anytime you need me, Madame President, you know I'm just a cab ride across town."

They chatted briefly about his classes. Zoey expected to teach law after leaving office, just as her father had been a professor of economics following his two terms in office.

Donna asked, "What's got Sunny moping around?"

"He wanted to go out to the rocks with Ironhide to visit with Georgie, but he didn't want to leave Sides with all the work here."

"Well, it's about damn time they got serious," she grinned. "I thought we were going to have to stage an intervention."

Josh coughed something that sounded like "busybody." Donna laughed and rested her head on his shoulder.

Jazzie came out of recharge and wanted down to play. Optimus lifted her down from his lap and watched as she and Russ took off up the beach with some other kids.

He saw Simmons reach over to take Mearing's hand, and remembered the impromptu beach party almost twenty years ago when they had got engaged, the evening before Sam and Carly's son had been born. It had been one thing then to know intellectually how short the human lifespan was. It was quite another to watch his friends getting older before his optics. Even Carly had a few gray hairs now, and Dan was seventeen, the same age as Sam had been when they had first met. The young man was a proud member of Rodimus' Gold Team. He had more control over the psychic abilities that the All-Spark had granted them, but he generally had to be near someone or something to have a vision about it. Rather than leave a seventeen-year-old boy to deal with that on his own, Optimus had put him on Gold Team where he trusted the younger Prime to know the difference between necessary and stupid risks.

Sam's talents had taken a different path, a more limited precognition that usually extended only a few minutes into the future. It wasn't foolproof. He saw only probabilities, not certainties. But he had learned to use that talent along with the data analysis skills he had learned from Mearing to predict the likely outcomes of situations that they encountered. Now more often than not, Sam was the calm confident voice coordinating things from ops, while Charlotte and Seymour confined themselves to mission planning and analysis.

Will had passed the baton to Graham, but he too usually got involved with planning anything important. He and Sara were building the EDF Academy into something that they could all be proud of. There was talk of expanding it to the High Port, because it was starting to outgrow its facilities on Diego Garcia, and because the starships that the cadets would crew were there. The fleet was expanding as more nations built ships to join its ranks.

Time was an enemy no one could fight. Optimus' own brief experience with the Great Beyond reminded him that there was never an ending, only change, but loss was still loss. A part of faith was letting people walk their own paths in the confidence that they would be reunited someday.

For now, they had the precious gift of peace. Galvatron was still out there, he knew that. It was only a matter of time until they clashed again, but he hoped and prayed to keep that far from Earth. Galvatron's final threat still echoed in his audios. Optimus knew that his brother had meant every word. In spite of him, the Cybertronian race would flourish here side by side with their human brothers and sisters. The best of Cybertron would rise again, as one foundation of the new civilization that they all were building together, a light to stand strong against the darkness.

*-T-F-Rising*

Nightstar was awakened early from recharge a few evenings later by a sharp pain in her chest. She felt a moment of sheer panic before she woke up enough to realize what was happening.

Lodestone could recharge through a hurricane. She shook him awake. ::Love, it's time.::

His optics brightened. ::What's wrong, Starry?::

She unshielded their bond, which she had damped to spare him while the pain was bad. He felt their son's restless movements as he tried to break free. ::Get Mom. You're about to be a daddy.::

He practically fell off the berth as he hurried to get Chromia. His mother-in-law had been through this herself, so she was a lot calmer. Ironhide knew Chromia was going to want some time to check on Star and make sure everything was progressing normally.

Lodestone worried, "I should have made her go to Marsbase or at least aboard the _Pride_. If anything goes wrong out here–"

"Starry's tough, just like her old mech. She and my grandson are going to be just fine." Hide got Lodestone a drink to calm him down. The fact was, if anything went wrong there probably would be nothing anyone could do even if Ratchet was standing right next to her. Spark damage was either able to self-repair, or fatal, there was hardly ever any middle ground where a medic could help. Therefore most bots chose to separate at home, surrounded by those they were most closely bonded with, rather than in a hospital like humans.

Chromia helped Star open her chest plates. Her spark was almost hidden behind the sparkling, who was wriggling in an attempt to break free. The little one's high pitched screech warned them that another split was coming. Star damped the bond and bit back a scream as it felt like her spark was shattering. Chromia talked her through it. "Have you two decided on a name? Because another two or three like that and he's going to need it."

Star nodded. "We have one, but there's a miner clan superstition that you should be the first one to hear your own name. Where's my sparkmate?"

"I'd better get him before he and your father get overloaded, then we'll have two more infants to deal with." Chromia called them in.

Ironhide was a little embarrassed about being in there, but Star said, "Primus, Dad, the only thing here that you didn't wash when I was little is your grandson!"

Anna squeezed in. "What can I do?"

Chromia asked, "Can you get in a position to get a better look at the fracture plane? Watch out, if you scare him he'll use those sharp little birthing claws."

Anna got into the kit and pulled on a hair net, unwilling to chance dropping anything conductive. Bracing herself on Chromia's arm, she leaned over to look. "Oh, my God, this is so amazing... He's looking at me, Starry! It looks fine, there's one clean split about halfway through now. Oh, my God!"

"What does he look like?" Star asked.

"I can only see about half his little face, but I think he looks like you." Anna's eyes welled over with tears of joy and she moved before they could fall.

"Thank Primus he got his looks from you, Star!" Lodestone joked.

Star started to damp the bond again, but her mate didn't let her. He shared his strength with her and his son, bearing up under the shared pain with solid miner stoicism. The family bond opened fully for the first time and the proud new parents told the sparkling his name.

A couple of minutes later, the final split came. Chromia tenderly lifted the tiny new mech to clean and tend him while Anna moved in to check the mother. "Looks great, Starry. There are some microfractures but they're smaller than in the training vids." Some energon was leaking from a line that had supplied the sparkling, she clipped that off just as Chromia was doing with the little one. A bit of energon splashed her wrist above her rubber glove, but she ignored the small burn as she capped off the tiny electrical cables. Little flashes of light were Star's self-repair systems starting to work.

Chromia handed the sparkling to Anna, and returned to help set her daughter's armor to rights. Nobot could ever really relax with their spark chamber vulnerable. She knew that was one major reason Star had wanted her father to stay with her, she felt safest with her mate, her best friend and both her parents there, just as Chromia had wanted her cohort with her when she had given birth. Lodestone let the new auntie coo over the sparkling for a while before he took him. When Star was comfortably situated, Chromia went to get Aurora to introduce her to her new nephew.

Starry was holding her sparkling when Chromia got back with her younger daughter, her son, Jordan and Jenny, and Will and Sara.

Star and Lodestone looked at each other, then Lodestone said, "Friends, family and clan mates, Nightstar of Diego Garcia and I, Lodestone of the _Pride of Iacon, _introduce our son-Ironstone of Wilson-Lodestone Station!"

Star put her tiny son in Ironhide's servos. He held his grandson to his chest. ::Thanks, little femme,:: he said, trying not to embarrass himself by busting out crying as once again he realized how blessed he was to be alive to meet the little guy. But there wasn't a dry eye or optic anywhere in the room. Gratitude and joy caroled through the many bonds in the room, even the ephemeral invisible ones involving the organics. Anna leaned against him crying tears of joy and he couldn't help thinking back to when she had been a baby.

::He'll be proud to be named for his daddy and his grandpa. It came out to be a good strong miner clan name, too, if that's where his road takes him,:: Star said.

Sara asked Anna, "When are you two going to make me a grandma again?"

"We'll have to talk about that, Mom." But there was a special light in the glance that Anna and Jordan exchanged. Sara thought it wouldn't be much longer before another kid was bouncing around the dome outside.

Chromia shooed everyone out so the new little family could rest and bond. By then, the rest of Green Team was awake. Jordan broke out the good stuff to drink to their health. Even Will had a finger of scotch. He rarely went against doctor's orders, only ever on special occasions like this.

Aurora held up her little servos to have Daddy pick her up. "Stony little!"

"He's bigger than you were when your mama had you, Little Bit."

The adults laughed at the face she made trying to wrap her processor around that. She was drifting off to recharge in his arms, in spite of her attempts to stay awake. He put her down in a portable sparkling crate in their berthroom . They had discovered that a "born" sparkling as opposed to a larger "created" one felt more secure and rested better in a small space if one of their parents wasn't holding them. It was a few years before they were comfortable sleeping on a berth. Otherwise, Mom or Dad would wake up with a tiny bot magna-locked to them-or failing that, to a sparkling screeching the place down.

Ironhide returned to find Skyrocket and Firecracker seeing who could drink the other under the table. Chromia declared, "I don't know who's cleaning up after you two idiots but it won't be me."

Ironhide growled at his son, "No kidding, and I don't want to explain your drunk afts to your little sister either."

Shaker said, "Won't be a problem. Let's take it out to the warehouse. Move it, Rocket."

Will laughed. "Bet you Shaker's the only one walking in the morning."

Chromia said, "They remind me of us when the war first started. I wish I knew how many times we went out drinking and raising the pit down Central Causeway. All those little dives out over the chasm. We'd wake up the next morning with no idea how we got wherever we ended up-until Prime told us, because he was the only one who hadn't got slag-faced the night before."

Sara nodded. They had done their fair share of carousing in their younger days. She said, "Will, remember that one time in Rio?"

"I remember the first part of that one time in Rio," he replied dryly.

Anna and Jordan went out with her team but came back inside fairly sober. Jordan had had enough to stumble when he crossed the threshold and hit the building's artificial gravity. Anna hugged her parents and her aunt and uncle good night. "We're going to hit our rack. Shaker and John are keeping Rocket and Firecracker out of trouble, so Jordan and I are going to take care of it early in the morning if they make a mess."

The two older couples sat up keeping an eye out in case Star had any kind of trouble overnight. Early the next morning, Anna and Jordan went out to get the warehouse in order before it was time to open up shop. They kicked the two hungover mechs out to the _Xan II _to got some sleep, while Shaker and Dragonfly helped Anna and Jordan put the warehouse to rights.

Customers started coming in. The word had got out, and most of their neighbors were Lodestone's clanmates. They came to see their clan's newest son and congratulate the parents. They brought whatever spare energon they had around, knowing Star would need it to recover and care for the sparkling if they didn't already have enough laid by. Better too much than not enough. There were plenty of offers of help.

Chromia was glad to know Lodestone and Jordan wouldn't be left entirely on their own with a new sparkling when Star and Anna had to go back on duty. There were several of Lodestone's relatives working claims not too far away who had sparklings of their own.

Chromia ached for her oldest daughter. Too soon she would have to leave the arms of her family and go back on patrol. Leaving that little mech was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done in her young life.

Will said, understanding, "I was in Qatar when Anna was born. Didn't get to meet her in person till after Mission City. Being away from your family-that's the hardest part of this life. That's why I stepped down from command after the war with Unicron, not the medical stuff. I wanted to be able to put my family first."

Chromia nodded. "If anyone paid their dues, you did, Will."

"I was glad to do it, Chromia. We came along at the right moment in time to do what needed done. They won't see the likes of the gang of us again—I hope there isn't ever a need for it! Now I'm happy just to watch the little ones grow up."

Chromia nodded. For all the sorrow and fear and pain, she wouldn't have missed rolling with the Autobots for all the riches of a hundred worlds. But now it was good to raise her sparklings in peace. Not that her wild and crazy clan couldn't turn back into Optimus Prime's war band in a nanoklick if situations required. It was just good to know they probably wouldn't have to, not anytime soon anyway. For all they had lost, all they had suffered, the payoff was this time of plenty and this houseful of love. It was more than enough.

(A.N. One more chapter to go. To Steve, till someday when aloha goodbye turns to aloha hello again. /A.N.)


	62. Epilogue III—We'll Walk In Fields of Gol

(Epilogue III—We'll Walk In Fields of Gold)

(Disclaimers in Chapter 1)

(2030—Diego Garcia)

Georgie and Sunstreaker walked through Diego Garcia's large open-air market. In the last five or ten years, it had really grown. One end catered exclusively to humans. Food, clothing, things that didn't interest bots unless they were buying something for a human. The other end had shops that sold to bots. Most were the businesses of skilled artisans who did upgrades of all sorts, artists who did paint jobs, that sort of thing. In the middle were the interesting places that appealed equally to both.

Kids of every size and shape crammed the sidewalks and dashed back and forth to the beach. Some teenage girls in bikinis excused themselves past two small girls in modest clothing and headscarves riding double on a young femme's little motorcycle alt.

Some young men were lounging around smoking cigarettes outside a club from which loud music pulsed. The dance floor was large enough for bots, while human-sized tables alternated with bot seating around the walls.

A weapons shop was doing a brisk business. Most of the military people, both from Diego Garcia and the US Navy, had their own personal weapons, and nearly all the civilians joined the island's volunteer militia to keep their skills sharp. The general wisdom was that a Decepticon or an Acolyte would just as gladly kill an unarmed human as one with a weapon, so you had might as well shoot back. Of course all the bots were armed, after so many vorns of warfare it was ingrained in their culture that they all needed to be able to defend themselves. There was a crowd in there, with a shooting contest coming up. There was always a fierce competition between the militia, Black Team, NEST, and the US Marines from the port.

Sunny led her to a new shop. An old miner had set up a toy store. There were all kinds of human toys imported from all over the world, that both human children and sparklings enjoyed, as well as Cybertronian toys that the owner built. Sunny led her to a counter in the back where robotic pets were sold. "Back on Cybertron, these little guys used to be everywhere. But as the war went on...it was just no place for them anymore. Now..."

"Pets are part of life getting back to normal," she said.

"Exactly."

"Are they bots like us?"

"Yes and no, they're like Scramble."

The owner shouted as a cyberkitten launched itself from a shelf and landed on Georgie's shoulder. She turned her head to stare in shock and raised a shaking servo to stroke its back.

She turned to the shopkeeper. "How much for this kitten?"

"Seventeen, with the take-home kit. Now he won't get too much bigger than that. I sell a lot of that size to humans. But he seems to have already decided he's your cybercat."

She counted out the coins and subspaced the box of cat things he handed over. "Sunny, how did you know-?"

"I didn't, I just hoped they would have a pet you'd like. You need to bond with him as soon as possible. He needs the security to be happy."

"Let's take him home." Once they were out of the crowd, they transformed, Georgie carefully curling up around her new little friend. They went in the side door nearest her quarters and sat down on the berth with the kitten.

As soon as she let the bond form, she knew. "Welcome home, little guy. Can't call you Fleabag this time around, can I?"

"You mean he's really-?"

"I can't be positive, of course, because organic bonds are subconscious. They're real but they aren't as tangible as ones we have with each other. But this kitten and I sure as pit know each other from somewhere. I'm sure it's him."

"Why did you name him Fleabag in the first place?"

"That damn landlord didn't allow pets. Fleabag got in under my feet while I was bringing in groceries, and made himself at home. He got my whole place full of fleas. I ended up setting off bug bombs in every room, and I had to give a flea bath to a big mean alley cat. I looked like I lost a fight with a barbed wire fence by the time I got done. And then I had to find a new place where I could keep a cat! Fleabag was probably about the nicest thing I called him."

"I'd say that relationship got off to a rocky start."

"That's the truth." The cybercat purred and brightened his now-blue optics. His long whiplike tail wrapped around her wrist and he started chewing on her arm. "Yeah, he used to do that too. _No_."

"That's what he's going to think his name is," Sunny teased her.

She laughed. "Most likely. If he acts like an organic kitten, he's going to be crazy for a few months. If he keeps up the scratching and biting, I'll have to at least partially disable his claws and fangs until he's old enough to know better, or he could really hurt one of the humans."

"You can forbid him from initiating combat except with his toys. They come with a default instruction set but there are others you can pick from. It won't change his personality or anything, that wouldn't be right. But you can set behavior parameters."

She popped one of her own claws to slit the box top and removed it. There were two data chips, one with the cybercat's programming and the other an information packet for her. She slotted that one and read it in the background while she unpacked everything else and put out his toys and small berth. She poured out a small dish of energon, and the kitten was meowing and winding around her ankles before she could put it down for him.

For safety's sake she did set limits on what he could attack, but she left him free to defend himself. Other than that she didn't make any other changes, figuring it would be better to let him develop normally.

She and Sunny spent most of the afternoon playing with the kitten and talking about anything and everything. When the cyberkitten settled down (on her berth, of course, ignoring his) to recharge, they went out to the common room to hang out for a while before Sunny went on duty in Ops.

When they got there, news came in from Mars Base that Dragonfly and Shaker's daughter Skydancer had been born. Georgie looked around at her celebrating clan and wondered if one day not too far away, she and Sunny might be welcoming their own sparkling to the universe. She had the strong feeling that they were sparkmates. Maybe it was time to find out.

How different was this place of hope and new dreams from the shattered, grief-ridden band of refugees that had survived Chicago by courage, skill and string of miracles. She wasn't sure where nineteen years had gone so fast.

Optimus and Elita looked so much younger and happier now, together with their little Jazzie, who was sitting on her mother's lap half in recharge.

Skids, Mudflap, and several NEST soldiers were playing an Internet Call of Duty tournament against some team in Japan. The latest version of the game finally had bot characters, so the composition of their avatar unit was pretty close to real life. It sounded like they were doing fairly well.

Kenoi walked by and stopped to watch the tournament for a little while, then got involved in a conversation with Iceblade and the two of them went over to a wall terminal to check on something. Georgie smiled when she noticed how close together they were standing, something to which the two of them were still oblivious. Kenoi was one of those ageless warriors who seemed to be honed by the passage of time rather than weakened by it.

Arcee and Rodimus went outside together. Their relationship was progressing slowly, but there clearly was something there. They were happy to let it grow at its own pace.

Russ Michaels-Banes paid no attention to the usual chaos in the common room as he lay on the floor near his mother's chair reading a homework assignment on his data pad. Kaela was talking to Que on her cell phone. She abruptly squawked, "My experiment did what!" And took off toward the lab at a flat-out run. Russ just shook his head and kept studying.

Georgie leaned forward to set her empty cube on the table. Sunny took advantage of the opportunity to put his arm behind her, to no objection whatsoever.

She thought about an old song. They truly were walking in fields of gold. As her Baptist mama in her previous life would have said, the seeds that they had sown in tears, they now reaped with rejoicing. Georgie settled a little closer to Sunny with a profound sense of gratitude and peace.

The End

_A.N.: Chapter title from Fields of Gold by Eva Cassidy. My deepest thanks to all the readers who have stayed with me throughout this long story. I'm sad to see this one end, but I think this tale has come to its natural conclusion. These characters have become very near and dear to my heart over the past few months, though, so I will probably write more in this fandom if I come up with ideas for side stories or sequels. /A.N._


End file.
